Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RESEARCH OF IMPLICIT ATTITUDES TOWARDS GAMBLING FOR GAMBLERS AND NON-GAMBLERS

The importance of studying attitudes towards gambling has been recently recognized in the field of gambling. Research aim is to examine whether non-gamblers and gamblers exhibit both positive and negative implicit attitudes towards gambling-related stimuli. Research questions: (I) What is the valence of implicit associations with gambling among gamblers and non-gamblers? (II) Are the differences in attitudes towards gambling revealed by explicit and implicit methods among gamblers and non–gamblers? (III) Is there a consistency between results obtained by implicit measures and explicit measures of attitude towards gambling? Methods: Participants - 98, age 18-58, Mdn=34 years. Groups: Social Gamblers – 24, Problem Gamblers – 25, Non-Gamblers – 49. Implicit measures: Modified version of Single-Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT). Explicit measures: “Gambling Attitudes and Beliefs (GABS)” and “Gamblers anonymous twenty questions (GA-20)”. Results and Conclusions. (I) Both positive and negative implicit gambling associations were found in each of the groups. (II) Explicit attitudes towards gambling are most pronounced in social gamblers and most not pronounced in non-gamblers. Differences in implicit associations with gambling among the groups were not found. (III) In case of positive implicit associations, a negative correlation between the results of explicit and implicit measurements was found. It is possible that the use of negative implicit associations will contribute to the classification of gamblers with low, moderate and high risk.
A Generalization of SAT and #SAT for Robust Policy Evaluation

Both SAT and #SAT can represent difficult problems in seemingly dissimilar areas such as planning, verification, and probabilistic inference. Here, we examine an expressive new language, #∃SAT, that generalizes both of these languages. #∃SAT problems require counting the number of satisfiable formulas in a concisely-describable set of existentially-quantified, propositional formulas. We characterize the expressiveness and worst-case difficulty of #∃SAT by proving it is complete for the complexity class #PNP[1], and relating this class to more familiar complexity classes. We also experiment with three new general-purpose #∃SAT solvers on a battery of problem distributions including a simple logistics domain. Our experiments show that, despite the formidable worst-case complexity of #PNP[1], many of the instances can be solved efficiently by noticing and exploiting a particular type of frequent structure.
Testing a Framework for the Quality of Process Models - A Case Study

Process modeling can be regarded as the currently most popular form of conceptual modeling. Research evidence illustrates how process modeling is applied across the different information system life cycle phases for a range of different applications, such as configuration of Enterprise Systems, workflow management, or software development. However, a detailed discussion of critical factors of the quality of process models is still missing. This paper proposes a framework consisting of six quality factors, which is derived from a comprehensive literature review. It then presents in a case study, a utility provider, who had designed various business process models for the selection of an Enterprise System. The paper summarizes potential means of conducting a successful process modeling initiative and evaluates the described modeling approach within the Guidelines of Modeling (GoM) framework. An outlook shows the potential lessons learnt, and concludes with insights to the next phases of this study.
Statistical Analysis of Insurance Claims Reserves i n Nigeria

Insurance claims are demands made by policyholders for payment under insurance for a loss covered by that policy. This paper set out to analyze claims data adopting lognormal regression model. Tr aditional claims reserving techniques are based on run-off triangle containing aggregate claim figures. Such a triangle provides a summary of an u nderlying data set with individual claim figures. In this paper we explore the interpretation of the available individual data in the framework of longi tudinal data analysis. Making use of the theory of linear mixed models, a flexible model for loss reserving is built. Both likelihood - based, as we ll as Bayesian approach is considered.
Signatures of quantum transport through two-dimensional structures with correlated and anticorrelated interfaces

Electronic transport through a two-dimensional decananometer length channel with correlated and anticorrelated surfaces morphologies is studied using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green’s-function technique. Due to the pseudoperiodicity of these structures, the energy-resolved transmission possesses pseudoband and pseudogap. Channels with correlated surfaces are found to exhibit wider pseudobands than their anticorrelated counterparts. By surveying channels with various combinations of material parameters, we found that a smaller transport mass increases the channel transmittivity and energy bandwidth of the pseudobands. A larger quantization mass yields a larger transmittivity in channels with anticorrelated surfaces. For channels with correlated surfaces, the dependence of transmittivity on quantization mass is complicated by odd-to-even mode transitions. An enhanced threshold energy in the energy-resolved transmission can also be observed in the presence of surface roughness. The computed enhanced threshold energy was able to achieve agreement with the experimental data for Si110 and Si100 devices.
Hierarchical feature-based translation for scalable natural language understanding

For complex natural language understanding systems with a large number of statistically confusable but semantically different formal commands, there are many difﬁculties in performing an accu-rate translation of a user input into a formal command in a single step. This paper addresses scalability issues in natural language understanding, and describes a method for performing the translation in a hierarchical manner. The hierarchical method improves the system accuracy, reduces the computational complexity of the translation, provides additional numerical robustness during training and decoding, and permits a more efﬁcient packaging of the components of the natural language understanding system.
Charge Transfer Enhancement in the D-π-A Type Porphyrin Dyes: A Density Functional Theory (DFT) and Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TD-DFT) Study

The electronic geometries and optical properties of two D-π-A type zinc porphyrin dyes (NCH3-YD2 and TPhe-YD) were systematically investigated by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) to reveal the origin of significantly altered charge transfer enhancement by changing the electron donor of the famous porphyrin-based sensitizer YD2-o-C8. The molecular geometries and photophysical properties of dyes before and after binding to the TiO2 cluster were fully investigated. From the analyses of natural bond orbital (NBO), extended charge decomposition analysis (ECDA), and electron density variations (Δρ) between the excited state and ground state, it was found that the introduction of N(CH3)2 and 1,1,2-triphenylethene groups enhanced the intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) character compared to YD2-o-C8. The absorption wavelength and transition possess character were significantly influenced by N(CH3)2 and 1,1,2-triphenylethene groups. NCH3-YD2 with N(CH3)2 groups in the donor part is an effective way to improve the interactions between the dyes and TiO2 surface, light having efficiency (LHE), and free energy change (ΔGinject), which is expected to be an efficient dye for use in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs).
Continuous Query Processing on Combined Data Stream: Sensor, Location and Identification

RFID has become one of the emerging technologies for a wide area of applications such as cold chain system and blood transportation. To support a safe transaction of tagged items in those systems, it is necessary to provide the history of item’s status and location by using other devices, including a RFID sensor tag, GPS, and RTLS. Because of high communication cost to RFID middleware on the move, status and location of tagged items are simultaneously gathered by the RFID reader after they are stored in the tag memory. This information has characteristics of not only streaming data but bulk data. To prevent data loss by large amount of input data, therefore, RFID middleware should manage dynamically the size of queues for collecting data from readers. In this paper, we propose a queue resizing technique of RFID middleware in order to process combined data stream efficiently. Queue resizing adjusts queue size of each data source based on the size of collected data. Since proposed technique prevent data overflow by small queue size and memory loss by excessive static queue size, RFID middleware can process continuous queries for combined data stream in real-time.
Chinese Chess Character Recognition with Radial Harmonic Fourier Moments

Radial harmonic Fourier moments (RHFMs) are invariant to translation, rotation, scaling and intensity, which own excellent image description ability, noise-resistant power, and less computational complexity. In this paper, RHFMs have been applied to the rotated Chinese Chess character recognition, which is the key step in chess recognition for vision system of Chinese Chess playing robot. In order to evaluate the efficiency of this method, experiments on both toy images and real chess images were carried out respectively. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method achieves an average recognition rate of 99.49% in artificial datasets and 99.57% in real-world datasets. The results demonstrate that the RHFMs have excellent performance in rotated Chinese Chess character recognition.
Shape computation of closed elastica under external forces

This paper deals with a computation method for calculating a largely deformed shape of a closed elastica subject to external forces. The computation method considered here utilizes a dimensionless discrete elastica model discretized by a multi-link approximation, and employs the shooting method for solving boundary-value problems of a closed elastica. Validity of the computation is confirmed by comparing a real shape of a closed elastica subject to external forces and a corresponding simulated one. Numerical stability of the computation is also discussed.
A new graph-based evolutionary approach to sequence clustering

Clustering methods provide users with methods to summarize and organize the huge amount of data in order to help them find what they are looking for. However, one of the drawbacks of clustering algorithms is that the result may vary greatly when using different clustering criteria. In this paper, we present a new clustering algorithm based on graph partitioning approach that only considers the pairwise similarities. The algorithm makes no assumptions about the size or the number of clusters. Besides this, the algorithm can make use of multiple clustering criteria functions. We present experimental results on a synthetic data set and a real world Web log data. Our experiments indicate that our clustering algorithm can efficiently cluster data items without any constraints on the number of clusters.
Speckle Tracking for the Recovery of Displacement and Velocity Information from Sequences of Ultrasound Images of the Tongue

This paper explores the use of deformable registration (speckle tracking) as a method for obtaining point correspondences on sequences of tongue images acquired via ultrasound in order to estimate tongue velocity and displacement. We model the velocity field as smooth Bspline functions and estimate it from adjacent frames. This model enables us to accumulate the motion and hence calculate the displacement from the first frame to any frame in the image sequence. Specifically, it provides the displacement estimates on the curve, enabling us to introduce “virtual flesh point markers” on the tongue surface. We tested the algorithm on ultrasound image sequences that were taken during the production of domain initial vowels in two different prosodic domains – word initial and accentual phrase initial. The results demonstrate the utility of the algorithm in quantification of tongue motion in speech.
A hybrid forecasting methodology using feature selection and support vector regression

Various techniques have been proposed to forecast a given time series. Models from the ARIMA family have been successfully used as well as regression approaches based on e.g. linear, non-linear regression, neural networks, and support vector machines. What makes the difference in many real-world applications, however, is not the technique but an appropriated forecasting methodology. Here we present such a methodology for the regression-based forecasting approach. A hybrid system is presented that iteratively selects the most relevant features and constructs the best regression model given certain criteria. We present a particular technique for feature selection as well as for model construction. The methodology, however, is a generic one providing the opportunity to employ alternative approaches within our framework.
Assessment of preferred learning modalities of undergraduate medical students using the visual-aural-read/write-kinesthetic questionnaire and the impact of gender

Background: Among the several tools available to assess learning styles of students, the visual-aural-read/write-kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire is a simple, easy to administer, freely available tool that facilitates students to understand their learning behavior in a way that they can relate with and accept. Aims and Objectives: The objective was to understand the preferred learning modality (or modalities) of medical students and assess the impact of gender on learning preferences. Materials and Methods: Three hundred and twenty-eight undergraduate students undergoing medical training at our medical college were approached to participate in the exercise. 273 (83.2%) students consented and were provided version 7.8 of the VARK questionnaire in printed format. Along with the questionnaire, we also collected demographic data. Results: The majority of students in our study preferred more than one learning modality (64.3%). The predominant modalities of learning were visual (65.6%) and aural (63%). The learning modality preference was not influenced by gender. Conclusions: Despite the fact that we use a multitude of teaching methodologies, there has not been an ardent effort to ascertain whether these sufficiently address the needs of different types of learners. While teachers can utilize this information to facilitate and improve student learning, students can use the knowledge of their learning preferences to change their learning habits. We hope these results will help us better our teachinglearning activities.
Identification of a Xylogalacturonan Xylosyltransferase Involved in Pectin Biosynthesis in Arabidopsis[W][OA]

Xylogalacturonan (XGA) is a class of pectic polysaccharide found in plant cell walls. The Arabidopsis thaliana locus At5g33290 encodes a predicted Type II membrane protein, and insertion mutants of the At5g33290 locus had decreased cell wall xylose. Immunological studies, enzymatic extraction of polysaccharides, monosaccharide linkage analysis, and oligosaccharide mass profiling were employed to identify the affected cell wall polymer. Pectic XGA was reduced to much lower levels in mutant than in wild-type leaves, indicating a role of At5g33290 in XGA biosynthesis. The mutated gene was designated xylogalacturonan deficient1 (xgd1). Transformation of the xgd1-1 mutant with the wild-type gene restored XGA to wild-type levels. XGD1 protein heterologously expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana catalyzed the transfer of xylose from UDP-xylose onto oligogalacturonides and endogenous acceptors. The products formed could be hydrolyzed with an XGA-specific hydrolase. These results confirm that the XGD1 protein is a XGA xylosyltransferase. The protein was shown by expression of a fluorescent fusion protein in N. benthamiana to be localized in the Golgi vesicles as expected for a glycosyltransferase involved in pectin biosynthesis.
Reconstructing ownership architectures to help understand software systems

Recent research suggests that large software systems should have a documented system architecture. One form of documentation that may help describe the structure of software systems is the organization of the developers that designed and implemented the software system. We suggest that all ownership architecture that documents the relationship between developers and source code is a valuable aid in understanding large software systems. If this document is not available then we can reconstruct it based on the system implementation and other documentation. We examine Linux as a case study to demonstrate how to reconstruct and use this type of architecture. The reconstructed Linux ownership architecture provides information that complements other types of architectural documentation. It identifies experts for system components, shows non-functional dependencies, and provides estimates of the quality of components. Ownership architectures also allow us to find problems such as under-staffed sub-systems and components that risk abandonment.
Visualization of molecular dynamics via ray-tracing and animation in a vectorized environment

Scientific visualization methodologies are being utilized increasingly in attempts to understand physical phenomena via mathematical and simulation model results. Presented herein are the results of a visualization project which produced a vectorized, high-resolution, ray-traced animation of the dynamics of a protein molecule. The resulting animation was recorded on 35-mm film, with a resolution of 1024 X 1024 pixels with 24 color bits. Run-time statistics were also collected which relate image generation parameter ranges and interdependencies.
A framework for the development of cooperative robotic applications

The advances in mobile robotics, computing power, and wireless communications have turned feasible the development of communities of autonomous robots. In the last years, there is a greater interest in systems of multiple autonomous robots for the accomplishment of cooperative tasks. This project takes it into account and presents an architecture for the development of collaborative applications for a heterogeneous team of mobile robots based on embedded agents. The implemented architecture has the capacity to allow the team of robots to accomplish such tasks, and also it has tools and features that allow programmers to develop complex applications in a reasonable time. An agent-based development platform has been used for this purpose, due to it integrates the necessary capabilities for developing distributed applications, and manages the communications among all the components. To demonstrate the advantages of the architecture a real application, robot following, has been implemented. It consists of a set of embedded agents, which run in real robot systems, demonstrating that embedding agents in distributed intelligent systems is a powerful method for quick application development in the multirobot domain
The Economics of Customs Unions in the Commonwealth of Independent States

In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, trade among the new independent states collapsed. To help reestablish interstate trade, the 12 members of the Commonwealth of independent States (CIS) established a Free Trade Area. More recently, four members of the CIS -Belarus, Kazakstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Russia- agreed in principle to establish a Customs Union. The authors analyze the economic implications for potential members of establishing such a Customs Union. They conclude that the dynamic effects of the Union (and the Free Trade Area) are likely to be negative, because they would tend to be mixed but would be more harmful to countries that have already established relatively liberal trade regimes with lower average and less-differentiated tariffs than the common external tariff contemplated by the proposed Customs Union.
Format-compliant jpeg2000 encryption with combined packet header and packet body protection

All proposals for format-compliant encryption schemes for JPEG2000 that have been made to date only encrypt packet body data, but leave packet header data in plaintext. In this paper we show that for providing strict confidentiality, leaving the packet header in plaintext severely compromises the security of these schemes, as discriminative - and for some settings even visual - information can be extracted from the header. We propose a set of format-compliant transformations of the packet header data that confines this information leakage. Furthermore, we discuss to what extent the proposed header protection scheme may be used to increase the performance of partial/selective encryption schemes that, rather than providing full confidentiality, trade off security for a decrease in computational demands.
Impact of Link Weight Ranges on OSPF Weight Solutions

Finding a set of optimal link weights for OSPF routing is a NP-hard problem. Many heuristic algorithms have been proposed in the past. In this paper, we study the impact of link weight ranges on OSPF weight solutions. Experiments were conducted on three commonly used types of synthetic networks for a set of link weight ranges. Three heuristic algorithms with different search mechanisms were run independently for each network instance and for each link weight range. Based on the numerical results, we assess the link weight solutions with respect to solution quality, equal-cost multi-path and hop count, and then present guidelines on the choice of an acceptable link weight range, i.e. the minimum and maximum weight values.
Mutations in the Testis-Specific Enhancer of SOX9 in the SRY Independent Sex-Determining Mechanism in the Genus Tokudaia

SRY (sex-determining region Y) is widely conserved in eutherian mammals as a sex-determining gene located on the Y chromosome. SRY proteins bind to the testis-specific enhancer of SOX9 (TES) with SF1 to upregulate SOX9 expression in undifferentiated gonads of XY embryos of humans and mice. The core region within TES, named TESCO, is an important enhancer for mammalian sex determination. We show that TESCO of the genus Tokudaia lost enhancer activity caused by mutations in its SRY and SF1 binding sites. Two species of Tokudaia do not have the Y chromosome or SRY, and one species has multiple SRYs located on the neo-Y chromosome consisting of the Y fused with an autosome. The sequence of Tokudaia TESCO exhibited more than 83% identity with mouse TESCO, however, nucleotide substitution(s) were found in two out of three SRY binding sites and in five out of six SF1 binding sites. TESCO of all species showed low enhancer activity in cells co-transfected with SRY and SF1, and SOX9 and SF1 in reporter gene assays. Mutated TESCO, in which nucleotide substitutions found in SRY and SF1 binding sites were replaced with mouse sequence, recovered the activity. Furthermore, SRYs of the SRY-positive species could not activate the mutated TESCO or mouse TESCO, suggesting that SRYs lost function as a sex-determining gene any more. Our results indicate that the SRY dependent sex-determining mechanism was lost in a common ancestor of the genus Tokudaia caused by nucleotide substitutions in SRY and SF1 binding sites after emergence of a new sex-determining gene. We present the first evidence for an intermediate stage of the switchover from SRY to a new sex-determining gene in the evolution of mammalian sex-determining mechanism.