Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to fight the ‘Methodenstreit’? Veblen and Weber on economics, psychology and action

There have been comparative discussions about Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber before, but not quite from the most appropriate viewpoint. The present paper treats them as theorists of action, in social and economic analysis, and this perspective yields some interesting new findings. Both theorists are to be taken as participants in the great Methodenstreit in economics, 100 years ago, and it is Veblen who suggests a more radical solution to this dispute, he suggests its final abolishment. The main difference between Veblen and Weber is in their respective appreciations of the role of psychology in social analysis. Weber does not think it important, but in so thinking he misses the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology that Veblen endorses. Accordingly, both of these classical thinkers are to be considered as theorists of action, but so that it is Veblen who proffers a more general theory.
Young People and Paranormal Experiences: Why are they Scared? A Cognitive Pattern

Two qualitative projects have brought together non-directive and semi-directive interviews with 49 young people who had a paranormal experience (mainly spiritualism) between the ages of 11 and 18. A sequential analysis shows an emotional and cognitive pattern comprising four stages, accompanied by periods of anxiety. Young people move through those stages that correspond to a cognitive acceptance or rejection of what they are experiencing in order to maintain or reestablish paradigmatic stability. This study complements the many observations linking paranormal beliefs and anxiety, bringing with it the new discovery of a mechanism underlying the link between anxiety and some aspects of paranormal or anomalous experiences in young people.
Declarative updates of relational databases

This article presents a declarative language, called update calculus, of relational database updates. A formula in update calculus involves conditions for the current database, as well as assertions about a new database. Logical connectives and quantifiers become constructors of complex updates, offering flexible specifications of database transformations. Update calculus can express all nondeterministic database transformations that are polynomial time. For set-at-a-time evaluation of updates, we present a corresponding update algebra. Existing techniques of query processing can be incorporated into update evaluation. We show that updates in update calculus can be translated into expressions in update algebra and vice versa.
‘Beautiful Town’: the discovery of the suburbs and the vision of the garden city in late Meiji and Taishō literature

Abstract In the Taishō period (1912–26), a number of planned residential towns burgeoned on the outskirts of Tokyo, commonly called garden cities (den'en toshi) because of the term's idyllic, modern and Western connotations. The first part of this article argues that the suburb was in part precipitated by literary works that contributed significantly to the discovery of the aesthetic and poetic qualities of the suburb through an interpretation of Western romantic literature. The focus of analysis is Kunikida Doppo's Musashino (1898), with reference to related works by Kōtoku Shūsui, Tokutomi Roka, Tayama Katai and Yanagita Kunio. The second part of this article will focus on the works of Satō Haruo to examine the literary representation of the garden city in its early stage of development. Equipped with an architectural and town planning vision as well as an understanding of the West (or at least a fictional West), romanticism, cosmopolitanism and modernism, Satō created a diorama in his work to serve as a poetic response to existing suburban communities and an inspiration for garden cities. This article examines both actual and fictional suburban garden cities and thus blends historical and social data with literary analysis to explore how literature intersects with urban/suburban development.
Implicit learning in problem solving : The role of working memory capacity

Participants solving the Balls and Boxes puzzle for the first time were slowed in proportion to the level of working memory (WM) reduction resulting from a concurrent secondary task. On a second and still challenging solution of the same puzzle, performance was greatly improved, and the same WM load did not impair problem-solving efficiency. Thus, the effect of WM capacity reduction was selective for the first solution of the puzzle, indicating that learning to solve the puzzle, a vital part of the first solution, is slowed by the secondary WM-loading task. Retrospective verbal reports, tests of specific puzzle knowledge, and a recognition test of potential strategies all indicated that participants were unaware of their knowledge of the puzzle, suggesting that it had been learned implicitly. Concurrent protocols collected from participants supported this conclusion and further suggested that participants were not aware of learning to solve the puzzle as this learning occurred. These results provide evidence that implicit learning depends on WM capacity and that implicit memory can play an important role in problem solving. Starting with the original conception of problem solving as search through a problem space presented by Newell and Simon (1972), progressively more complex models and theories of problem solving have provided increasingly detailed accounts of human problem-solving behavior. These theories of problem solving universally assume a long-term knowledge store of rules and problem-solving strategies and a separate working memory (WM) that provides limited processing space for the evaluation of strategies and planning of operator application (e.g., move) sequences. The limited capacity of WM makes it possible to investigate the interaction of memory and problem-solving processes through manipulation (e.g., reduction) of WM capacity. However, recent work on the neurological basis of memory has shown that the canonical separation of memory into two components (WM and long-term memory) significantly underestimates the complexity of human memory. A number of studies of the phenomena of implicit learning and preserved learning in patients with anterograde amnesia (cf. Seger, 1994, and Squire, Knowlton, & Musen, 1993, for reviews) have provided convergent evidence that there are several long-term memory stores dependent on different
A Watermarking Algorithm by Modifying AC Coefficies in DCT Domain

A blind watermarking algorithm based on DCT for digital image is proposed, in which a 2-bit image embeds in a 8-bit gray image. Preprocess of image watermark, watermark embedding and extraction are the main parts of the algorithm. In the preprocess of image watermark Arnold scrambling is used to reduce the relevance of the watermark and also to improve the robustness of the image embedded watermark by scattering the bits of watermark which have been damaged by some attacks such as shearing. In the process of watermark embedding the original image is divided into some 8 times 8 blocks and each block is transformed into DCT coefficies which are sorted by means of Zig-Zag.An AC coefficie is selected in each block and the average of all of them is calculated. And then the AC coefficie is modified into a positive or negative value around the average according to the coefficie and the current value of the image watermark.In the process of extraction the bit of watermark is set to 1 or 0 according to positive and negative judgment of the AC coefficie.The experimental results show that the algorithm is robust and can resist some digital image attacks, such as JPEG compression, filtering, noise and shearing.
Voltage-Island Partitioning and Floorplanning Under Timing Constraints

Power consumption is a crucial concern in nanometer chip design. Researchers have shown that multiple supply voltage (MSV) is an effective method for power consumption reduction. The underlying idea behind MSV is the tradeoff between power saving and performance. In this paper, we present an effective voltage-assignment technique based on dynamic programming. For circuits without reconvergent fan-outs, an optimal solution for the voltage assignment is guaranteed; for circuits with reconvergent fan-outs, a near-optimal solution is obtained. We then generate a level shifter for each net that connects two blocks in different voltage domains and perform power-network-aware floorplanning for the MSV design. Experimental results show that our floorplanner is very effective in optimizing power consumption under timing constraints.
Determinantal Processes and Independence

We give a probabilistic introduction to determinantal and per- manental point processes. Determinantal processes arise in physics (fermions, eigenvalues of random matrices) and in combinatorics (nonintersecting paths, random spanning trees). They have the striking property that the number of points in a region D is a sum of independent Bernoulli random variables, with parameters which are eigenvalues of the relevant operator on L 2 (D). Moreover, any determinantal process can be represented as a mixture of determinantal projection processes. We give a simple explanation for these known facts, and establish analogous representations for permanental pro- cesses, with geometric variables replacing the Bernoulli variables. These representations lead to simple proofs of existence criteria and central limit theorems, and unify known results on the distribution of absolute values in certain processes with radially symmetric distributions.
Factors influencing the occurrence of flow state in elite athletes

Abstract Understanding factors which may influence the occurrence of flow in elaite athletes was the goal of the present investigation. Twenty-eight elite level athletes from seven sports were interviewed about the factors they perceived influenced their experience of flow state. Inductive content analyses of athletes' responses to questions about what facilitates, prevents, and disrupts flow, resulted in 10 dimensions that synthesized the 361 themes suggested by the athletes. These themes and dimensions provided insight into factors that may influence whether or not flow occurs in elite athletes. For example. some of the more salient factors influencing whether or not flow occurred included: preparation, both physical and mental; confidence; focus; how the performance felt and progressed; and optimal motivation and arousal level. This study also involved asking elite athletes about the perceived controllability of these factors, and of the state of flow itself. The majority of the athletes interviewed pe.
Gastric Stump Cancer: More Than Just Another Proximal Gastric Cancer and Demanding a More Suitable TNM Staging System

Background. Considerable controversy persists about the biological behavior of gastric stump cancer (GSC). The aim of this study is to clarify if this cancer is just another proximal gastric cancer or if it emerges as a distinctive clinicopathologic entity. Methods. This review of a prospectively collected gastric cancer database identified 73 patients with GSC in a single institution between January 1980 and June 2012 and compared them with 328 patients with proximal gastric cancer (PGC) and 291 patients with esophagogastric junction cancer (EGJC). Results. Patients with GSC were predominantly males. Eighty-three percent of GSC penetrated the subserosal or the serosal layers. The median number of lymph nodes retrieved in GSC patients was significantly lower than in PGC patients or in EGJC patients. Cumulative survival curves were not different between GSC, PGC, or EGJC patients. Unlike that observed in PGC and in EGJC, no significant differences in cumulative survival according to the TNM staging system were observed in GSC cases. Conclusions. The outcome of patients with GSC displayed significant differences when compared to those with other proximal gastric cancers concerning the lack of survival association with the TNM staging system. Therefore a more suitable staging system should be designed for these unique cancers.
Optimal Channel Shortener Design for Reduced- State Soft-Output Viterbi Equalizer in Single-Carrier Systems

We consider optimal channel shortener design for a reduced-state soft-output Viterbi equalizer (RS-SOVE) in single-carrier systems. To use RS-SOVE, three receiver filters need to be designed: a prefilter, a target response, and a feedback filter. The collection of these three filters are commonly referred to as the “channel shortener. ” Conventionally, the channel shortener is designed to transform an intersymbol interference (ISI) channel into an equivalent minimum-phase equivalent form. In this paper, we design the channel shortener to maximize a mutual information lower bound based on a mismatched detection model. By taking the decision-feedback quality in the RS-SOVE into consideration, the prefilter and feedback filter are found in closed forms, while the target response is optimized via a gradient-ascending approach with the gradient explicitly derived. The information theoretical properties of the proposed channel shortener are analyzed. Moreover, we show through numerical results that the proposed channel shortener design achieves superior detection performance compared with previous channel shortener designs at medium and high code rates.
Reappraisal of tests for xerostomia.

Our goal was to establish the practical usefulness of combinations of tests (saliva flow rate, SFR; salivary lysozyme, Lys; salivary lactoferrin, Lf; sialography, SG; salivary gland scintigraphy, SGS; and labial salivary gland biopsy, SGB) for the oral component of Sjögren's syndrome (SS). These tests were applied to 40 patients with primary SS (group A, defined by the presence of keratoconjunctivitis sicca, a positive response to two of three selected questions for xerostomia and the presence of two of four autoantibodies), 16 patients with secondary SS (group B), 16 patients with connective tissue disease but no evidence of secondary SS (group C) and 14 normal controls (to establish the threshold of the six tests). SFR was decreased in 68, 56 and 19% of the patients in groups A-C respectively [sensitivity (sens) 68%, specificity (sp) 81%, positive predictive value (PPV) 90% and negative predictive value (NPV) 50% for primary SS]. Lys was elevated in 3, 0 and 0% of the patients in groups A-C (sens 3%, sp 100%, PPV 100% and NPV 66%). Lf was reduced in 58, 69 and 25% of the patients in groups A-C (sens 58%, sp 75%, PPV 82% and NPV 53%). SG was positive in 74, 27 and 13% of the patients (sens 74%, sp 87%, PPV 93% and NPV 41%). SGS was positive in 75, 63 and 25% of the patients (sens 75%, sp 75%, PPV90% and NPV 45%). SGB was abnormal in 95, 94 and 25% (sens 95%, sp 75%, PPV 90%, NPV 14%). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Brain Inspired Architecture for an Outdoor Robot Guide

The paper describes the design of a robot architecture which allows the robot to be perceived as a social agent. The proposed architecture autonomously allocates resources to different activities via an evaluation of environmental stimuli and robot state based on an emotional model of attention and effort. Moreover, the robot carries out a dramatization of its own work, according to drama? s theory and its emotions. The architecture has been tested in a project regarding a robotic touristic guide acting in the Botanical Garden of the University of Palermo. This is a challenging application due to crowd of people, large spaces involved and high noise in sensor readings.
Reliability of Growth Indicators and Efficiency of Functional Treatment for Skeletal Class II Malocclusion: Current Evidence and Controversies

Current evidence on the reliability of growth indicators in the identification of the pubertal growth spurt and efficiency of functional treatment for skeletal Class II malocclusion, the timing of which relies on such indicators, is highly controversial. Regarding growth indicators, the hand and wrist (including the sole middle phalanx of the third finger) maturation method and the standing height recording appear to be most reliable. Other methods are subjected to controversies or were showed to be unreliable. Main sources of controversies include use of single stages instead of ossification events and diagnostic reliability conjecturally based on correlation analyses. Regarding evidence on the efficiency of functional treatment, when treated during the pubertal growth spurt, more favorable response is seen in skeletal Class II patients even though large individual responsiveness remains. Main sources of controversies include design of clinical trials, definition of Class II malocclusion, and lack of inclusion of skeletal maturity among the prognostic factors. While no growth indicator may be considered to have a full diagnostic reliability in the identification of the pubertal growth spurt, their use may still be recommended for increasing efficiency of functional treatment for skeletal Class II malocclusion.
Individual learning path constructing in multilevel regional educational system

This work proposes a new approach to the construction of student's individual learning path (ILP) in the multilevel regional educational system. To construct an ILP we use the education content model based on a multi-level system of generalized professional competencies that determines the training results at each level of professional education. The developed education content model describes the requirements of educational and professional standards, the content of generalized professional competencies for each level, the list of curriculum courses, the course contents, and the interconnection between courses and competencies. We offer a two-level individual learning path model based on a marked Petri net. The first level implies the choice of training direction and educational program at a certain level of professional education. The second level determines the course choice from the variable part of the educational program. The student competency level corresponds to the Petri net marking. The learning process is modeled as marking changes by the transitions in the Petri net. For searching of an optimum ILP we use algorithm based on tree of reachability for Petri net. We are developing a distributed information system based on the proposed methods as a web-resource available for students and employers.
PGRL1 Participates in Iron-induced Remodeling of the Photosynthetic Apparatus and in Energy Metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii*

PGRL1 RNA and protein levels are increased in iron-deficient Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells. In an RNAi strain, which accumulates lower PGRL1 levels in both iron-replete and -starved conditions, the photosynthetic electron transfer rate is decreased, respiratory capacity in iron-sufficient conditions is increased, and the efficiency of cyclic electron transfer under iron-deprivation is diminished. Pgrl1-kd cells exhibit iron deficiency symptoms at higher iron concentrations than wild-type cells, although the cells are not more depleted in cellular iron relative to wild-type cells as measured by mass spectrometry. Thiol-trapping experiments indicate iron-dependent and redox-induced conformational changes in PGRL1 that may provide a link between iron metabolism and the partitioning of photosynthetic electron transfer between linear and cyclic flow. We propose, therefore, that PGRL1 in C. reinhardtii may possess a dual function in the chloroplast; that is, iron sensing and modulation of electron transfer.
The Long-Term Relational Consequences of Problematic Family Backgrounds.

A large number of American children will grow up in a home disrupted by death or divorce, or in one that is intact but troubled by intense conflict or other problems. The present study addresses some of the long-term relational consequences of these family backgrounds. Using a sample of 313 volunteers average age of 35.4 years, those from intact-happy, intact-unhappy, death-disrupted, and divorce-disrupted families were compared on various measures of relational well-being (likelihood of being in an intimate relationship, quality of the intimate relationship, and number of children). Those from intact-happy families are less likely than others to be in an intimate relationship. The quality of intimate relationships formed by those from the four groups, and the number of children they had, did not differ.
A Simple and High-Throughput Analysis of Amatoxins and Phallotoxins in Human Plasma, Serum and Urine Using UPLC-MS/MS Combined with PRiME HLB μElution Platform

Amatoxins and phallotoxins are toxic cyclopeptides found in the genus Amanita and are among the predominant causes of fatal food poisoning in China. In the treatment of Amanita mushroom poisoning, an early and definite diagnosis is necessary for a successful outcome, which has prompted the development of protocols for the fast and confirmatory determination of amatoxins and phallotoxins in human biological fluids. For this purpose, a simple, rapid and sensitive multiresidue UPLC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous determination of α-amanitin, β-amanitin, γ-amanitin, phalloidin (PHD) and phallacidin (PCD) in human plasma, serum and urine was developed and validated. The diluted plasma, serum and urine samples were directly purified with a novel PRiME technique on a 96-well μElution plate platform, which allowed high-throughput sample processing and low reagent consumption. After purification, a UPLC-MS/MS analysis was performed using positive electrospray ionization (ESI+) in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. This method fulfilled the requirements of a validation test, with good results for the limit of detection (LOD), lower limit of quantification (LLOQ), accuracy, intra- and inter-assay precision, recovery and matrix effects. All of the analytes were confirmed and quantified in authentic plasma, serum and urine samples obtained from cases of poisoning using this method. Using the PRiME μElution technique for quantification reduces labor and time costs and represents a suitable method for routine toxicological and clinical emergency analysis.
Rapid, Low-Technology MIC Determination with Clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates by Using the Microplate Alamar Blue Assay

ABSTRACT A colorimetric, microplate-based Alamar Blue assay (MABA) method was used to determine the MICs of isoniazid (INH), rifampin, streptomycin (SM), and ethambutol (EMB) for 34 PeruvianMycobacterium tuberculosis isolates (including both pansensitive and multidrug-resistant strains) and the H37Rv strain by using bacterial suspensions prepared directly from solid media. Results for all isolates were available within 8 days. Discordant results were observed on initial tests for 3 of 16 INH-susceptible isolates, 5 of 31 EMB-susceptible isolates, and 2 of 4 SM-resistant isolates (by the BACTEC 460 system). The overall agreements between the MICs obtained by MABA and the results obtained with the BACTEC 460 system were 87.9% for initial results and 93.6% after retesting 12 of 17 samples with discrepant results. Interpretation of MABA endpoints improved with technical experience. The MABA is a simple, rapid, low-cost, appropriate technology which does not require expensive instrumentation and which makes use of a nontoxic, temperature-stable reagent.
Evaluation Measures Considering Sentence Concatenation for Automatic Summarization by Sentence or Word Extraction

Automatic summaries of text generated through sentence or word extraction has been evaluated by comparing them with manual summaries generated by humans by using numerical evaluation measures based on precision or accuracy . Although sentence extraction has previously been evaluated based only on precision of a single sentence, sentence concate-nations in the summaries should be evaluated as well. We have evaluated the appropriateness of sentence concatenations in summaries by using evaluation measures used for evaluating word concate-nations in summaries through word extraction. We determined that measures considering sentence concatenation much better reﬂect the human judgment rather than those based only on the precision of a single sentence.