Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Construction of an instrument to measure social valuation in an emerging market context

Purpose – This study aims to construct a parsimonious instrument to measure social valuation in a collective setting using Uganda as an example.Design/methodology/approach – A triangulation technique was used in this study. Conversations with students, parents, teaching and non‐teaching staff at Uganda Christian University (UCU) main campus were carried out, as well as a rigorous review of the literature to gather an original set of items on social valuation. Content and face validity were carried out in order to get rid of redundant and ambiguous items. The remaining items were incorporated in a questionnaire which was pretested before being distributed to a convenience sample of 650 third‐year business students on the four campuses of UCU, each located in one of the four regions of Uganda.Findings – Principal axis factoring by promax rotation extracted six oblique factors accounting for 56 percent of the variance, namely, teaching of entrepreneurship in schools, family, knowledge, institutions, percepti.
L’inférence émotionnelle durant la lecture et sa composante comportementale.

EnglishIn this paper, we extended Gygax, Tapiero and Carruzzo�s (2007) idea that the inference attached to the emotional status of the main protagonist is more likely constituted by behavioural information than by a specific emotion. In addition to this, we show that this behavioural inference can be distinguished from any behavioural iinference independant of an emotional context. We present an experiment on reading time measurements, in which readers, when reading short narrative stories, seemed more sensitive to behavioural information, and even more so when the information was attached to some emotion triggering situations. We therefore suggest that behavioural information linked to emotion representation occupies an important role in mental models and that it most likely takes advantage of a network of distributed representations (embodied cognition). francaisDans la presente etude, nous avons developpe l�idee de Gygax, Tapiero et Carruzzo (2007) suggerant que l�inference liee a l�emotion du personnage principal d�un texte releve davantage d�une information comportementale que d�une emotion dite specifique. Nous montrons par ailleurs que cette inference comportementale de type emotionnel se distingue d�une inference comportementale (predictive) detachee d�un contexte emotionnel. Nous presentons une experience basee sur les temps de lecture dans laquelle les participantes et participants ont montre, lors de la lecture de breves histoires narratives, une sensibilite plus importante pour les informations dites comportementales, et ceci de maniere plus prononcee lorsque ces informations etaient liees a des situations emotionnelles. Ainsi, nous proposons que la composante physique liee a la representation emotionnelle occupe une place privilegiee au sein des modeles mentaux et qu�elle beneficie d�un reseau distribue de representations (cognition incarnee).
Inverse reinforcement learning using Dynamic Policy Programming

This paper proposes a novel model-free inverse reinforcement learning method based on density ratio estimation under the framework of Dynamic Policy Programming. We show that the logarithm of the ratio between the optimal policy and the baseline policy is represented by the state-dependent cost and the value function. Our proposal is to use density ratio estimation methods to estimate the density ratio of policies and the least squares method with regularization to estimate the state-dependent cost and the value function that satisfies the relation. Our method can avoid computing the integral such as evaluating the partition function. A simple numerical simulation of a grid world navigation, a car driving, and a pendulum swing-up shows its superiority over conventional methods.
“The Day the Music Died”

Background: The nursing home Valerengen bo– og servicesenter in Oslo, Norway, a long–term institution with 84 residents, has continually had regular music therapy activities with a music therapist in full–time employment since 1999. The institution was without music therapy services during the fall of 2003. Method: At the end of the period without a music therapist, measurement of depression level by the use of Montgomery Aasberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) was conducted on residents (n=72). Two months after music therapy services had been resumed with music therapy groups twice a week in each ward and individualized services other days, a new measurement of depression level of all residents was conducted. Results: Depression rating show a significant fall in the music therapy condition, compared with the no music therapy condition in a crossover design: MADRS 20.4 on an average in the no music condition, 12.2 on an average in the music condition (p < .05). Staff at the institution was stable, and there were no significant changes in medication. Conclusion: A significant reduction in the average level of depression in a nursing home when music therapy services are resumed warrants recommendation for a larger controlled follow–up study.
Digging for Dead Genes: An Analysis of the Characteristics of the Pseudogene Population in the C. elegans Genome

Pseudogenes are non-functioning copies of genes in genomic DNA, which may either result from reverse transcription from a mRNA transcript (processed pseudogenes) or from gene duplication and subsequent disablement (non-processed pseudogenes). As pseudogenes are apparently ‘dead’, they usually have a variety of obvious disablements (e.g. insertions, deletions, frameshifts and truncations) relative to their functioning homologues. We have derived an initial estimate of the size, distribution and characteristics of the pseudogene population in the Caenorhabditis elegans genome, performing a survey in ‘molecular archaeology’. Corresponding to the 18,576 annotated proteins in the worm (i.e., in Wormpep18), we have found an estimated total of 2,168 pseudogenes, about one for every eight genes. Few of these appear to be processed. Details of our pseudogene assignments are available from http://bioinfo.mbb. yale.edu/genome/worm/pseudogene. The population of pseudogenes differs significantly from that of genes in a number of respects: (i) Pseudogenes are distributed unevenly across the genome relative to genes, with a disproportionate number on chromosome IV; (ii) The density of pseudogenes is higher on the arms of the chromosomes; (iii) The amino-acid composition of pseudogenes is midway between that of genes and (translations of) random intergenic DNA, with enrichment of Phe, Ile, Leu and Lys, and depletion of Asp, Ala, Glu and Gly relative to the worm proteome; And (iv) the most common protein folds and families differ somewhat between genes and pseudogenes -whereas the most common fold found in the worm proteome is the immunoglobulin fold, the most common ‘pseudofold’ is the C-type lectin. In addition, the size of a gene family bears little overall relationship to the size of its corresponding pseudogene complement, indicating a highly dynamic genome. There are in fact a number of families associated with large
Integrating facial expressions into user profiling for the improvement of a multimodal recommender system

Over the years, recommender systems have been systematically applied in both industry and academia to assist users in dealing with information overload. One of the factors that determine the performance of a recommender system is user feedback, which has been traditionally communicated through the application of explicit and implicit feedback techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel video search interface that predicts the topical relevance of a video by analysing affective aspects of user behaviour. We, furthermore, present a method for incorporating such affective features into user profiling, to facilitate the generation of meaningful recommendations, of unseen videos. Our experiment shows that multimodal interaction feature is a promising way to improve the performance of recommendation.
Characterization of catheter motion in intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) elastography imaging

Momentum created by a high intensity acoustic wave emitted in intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) imaging sequences is absorbed by the backing material of the catheter causing a kickback motion. This study was designed to characterize this motion. An elastography phantom was imaged with an 8Fr Soundstar™ ICE catheter and a 10Fr, 128 element ICE catheter with various fulcrum lengths and mechanical steering angles to assess the kickback motion. The fulcrum lengths (FLs) varied from 30 mm to 50 mm and showed irregularities in the motion in FLs over 40 mm in the 8Fr SoundStar™, but not in the 10Fr, 128 element ICE catheter. The mechanical steering, over the range tested in the 8Fr SoundStar™, did not have a statistically significant effect on the kickback motion. The motion was on the same order of magnitude of the induced displacements in both catheters. The kickback motion induces a bias of 0.5 to 3 μm to the ARFI images that is not consistent over the ARFI imaging ensemble. The current motion filtering techniques that are used to remove bulk cardiac or respiratory motion from the induced ARFI displacements are not sufficient for removing the kickback motion. In some cases, the motion filter increases the present bias. For both catheters, failure to properly account for this effect could degrade ICE ARFI image quality. New motion filtering techniques are necessary to reduce the kickback motion effect on induced displacements during ICE ARFI imaging.
The effects of existential threat on reading comprehension of worldview affirming and disconfirming information

Terror management theory posits that cultural worldviews buffer people from thoughts and concerns about death. In support of this claim, numerous studies have shown that mortality salience (MS) increases an individual's motivation to uphold and defend important cultural worldviews. We hypothesized that the motivation to defend cultural worldviews following MS would also enhance people's ability to comprehend worldview affirming (vs. disconfirming) information. Three studies investigated this possibility. Study 1 showed that MS (vs. control) increased reading comprehension of a pro-evolution essay among participants with a strongly evolutionist worldview, but decreased reading comprehension among participants with a strongly creationist worldview. With the use of a pro-creation essay, Study 2 conceptually replicated these effects and demonstrated that the interactive effect of worldview and death anxiety on reading comprehension was mediated by defensive motivation. Study 3 replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2 among participants with a strongly evolutionist worldview, but only when the information in the essay was perceived as veridical. Discussion focused on the specific process through which MS affects reading comprehension of worldview relevant ideas. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nash, Social and Centralized Solutions to Consensus Problems via Mean Field Control Theory

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize initial mean consensus behavior of a set of agents from the fundamental optimization principles of i) stochastic dynamic games, and ii) optimal control. In the stochastic dynamic game model each agent seeks to minimize its individual quadratic discounted cost function involving the mean of the states of all other agents. In this formulation we derive the limiting infinite population mean field equation system and explicitly compute its unique solution. The resulting mean field (MF) control strategies drive each agent to track the overall population's initial state distribution mean, and by applying these decentralized strategies, any finite population system reaches mean consensus asymptotically as time goes to infinity. Furthermore, these control laws possess an ε<i>N</i>-Nash equilibrium property where ε<i>N</i> goes to zero as the population size N goes to infinity. Finally, the analysis is extended to the case of random mean field couplings. In the social cooperative formulation the basic objective is to minimize a social cost as the sum of the individual cost functions containing mean field coupling. In this formulation we show that for any individual agent the decentralized mean field social (MF Social) control strategy is the same as the mean field Nash (MF Nash) equilibrium strategy. Hence MF-Nash Controls <i>U</i><sub>Nash</sub><i>N</i>=MF - Social Controls <i>U</i><sub>Soc</sub><i>N</i>. On the other hand, the solution to the centralized LQR optimal control formulation yields the Standard Consensus (SC) algorithm whenever the graph representing the corresponding topology of the network is Completely Connected (CC). Hence Cent. LQR Controls <i>U</i><sub>Cent</sub><i>N</i>=SC-CC Controls <i>U</i><sub>SC</sub><i>N</i>. Moreover, a system with centralized control laws reaches consensus on the initial state distribution mean as time and population size N go to infinity. Hence, asymptotically in time MF-Nash Controls <i>U</i><sub>Nash</sub><i>N</i>=MF-Social Controls <i>U</i><sub>Soc</sub><i>N</i> = Cent. LQR Controls <i>U</i><sub>Cent</sub><sup>∞</sup> = SC-CC Controls <i>U</i><sub>SC</sub><sup>∞</sup>. Finally, the analysis is extended to the long time average (LTA) cost functions case.
Agricultural Soil Spectral Response and Properties Assessment: Effects of Measurement Protocol and Data Mining Technique

Soil spectroscopy has shown to be a fast, cost-effective, environmentally friendly, non-destructive, reproducible and repeatable analytical technique. Soil components, as well as types of instruments, protocols, sampling methods, sample preparation, spectral acquisition techniques and analytical algorithms have a combined influence on the final performance. Therefore, it is important to characterize these differences and to introduce an effective approach in order to minimize the technical factors that alter reflectance spectra and consequent prediction. To quantify this alteration, a joint project between Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULS) and Tel-Aviv University (TAU) was conducted to estimate Cox, pH-H2O, pH-KCl and selected forms of Fe and Mn. Two different soil spectral measurement protocols and two data mining techniques were used to examine seventy-eight soil samples from five agricultural areas in different parts of the Czech Republic. Spectral measurements at both laboratories were made using different ASD spectroradiometers. The CULS protocol was based on employing a contact probe (CP) spectral measurement scheme, while the TAU protocol was carried out using a CP measurement method, accompanied with the internal soil standard (ISS) procedure. Two spectral datasets, acquired from different protocols, were both analyzed using partial least square regression (PLSR) technique as well as the PARACUDA II®, a new data mining engine for optimizing PLSR models. The results showed that spectra based on the CULS setup (non-ISS) demonstrated significantly higher albedo intensity and reflectance values relative to the TAU setup with ISS. However, the majority of statistics using the TAU protocol was not noticeably better than the CULS spectra. The paper also highlighted that under both measurement protocols, the PARACUDA II® engine proved to be a powerful tool for providing better results than PLSR. Such initiative is not only a way to unlock current limitations of soil spectroscopy, but also offers considerable efficiency and cost- and time-saving possibilities, which lead to further improvements in prediction performance of spectral models.
Hyperdimensional computing for noninvasive brain-computer interfaces: Blind and one-shot classification of EEG error-related potentials

The mathematical properties of high-dimensional (HD) spaces show remarkable agreement with behaviors controlled by the brain. Computing with HD vectors, referred to as "hypervectors," is a brain-inspired alternative to computing with numbers. HD computing is characterized by generality, scalability, robustness, and fast learning, making it a prime candidate for utilization in application domains such as brain-computer interfaces. We describe the use of HD computing to classify electroencephalography (EEG) error-related potentials for noninvasive brain-computer interfaces. Our algorithm encodes neural activity recorded from 64 EEG electrodes to a single temporal-spatial hypervector. This hypervector represents the event of interest and is used for recognition of the subject's intentions. Using the full set of training trials, HD computing achieves on average 5% higher accuracy compared to a conventional machine learning method on this task (74.5% vs. 69.5%) and offers further advantages: (1) Our algorithm learns fast by using 34% of training trials while surpassing the conventional method with an average accuracy of 70.5%. (2) Conventional method requires prior domain expert knowledge to carefully select a subset of electrodes for a subsequent pre-processor and classier, whereas our algorithm blindly uses all 64 electrodes, tolerates noises in data, and the resulting hypervector is intrinsically clustered into HD space; in addition, most preprocessing of the electrode signal can be eliminated while maintaining an average accuracy of 71.7%.
Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis in idiopathic membranous glomerulonephritis: a clinico-pathological and stereological study.

BACKGROUND The phenomenon of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) in idiopathic membranous glomerulonephritis (IMGN) has not been adequately studied. There is also a paucity of detailed glomerular morphometric and stereologic analyses data on renal biopsy in this association. METHODS Twenty-three (23) patients with IMGN and superimposed FSGS were compared to 35 patients with IMGN alone with respect to the clinical and laboratory features, light microscopic findings and stereologic parameters (glomerular cross-sectional area and estimated glomerular volume). RESULTS In the clinical parameters, patients with IMGN-FSGS had a significantly higher incidence of hypertension, raised serum creatinine and microscopic haematuria. The mean 24-h urinary protein excretion was higher in the group with IMGN-FSGS (7.4 +/- 1.36 g) as compared to IMGN alone (3.85 +/- 0.7 g, P < 0.001, Mann-Whitney test). On light microscopy, biopsies with IMGN-FSGS frequently had mesangial hypercellularity and more extensive tubulo-interstitial disease than those with IMGN alone. Stereological analysis showed that the non-sclerosed glomeruli in biopsies with IMGN-FSGS had a higher mean cross-sectional area (185466.7 +/- 32493.3 micro(2)) and higher estimated volume (855200 +/- 152640 micro(3)) as compared to glomeruli in cases with IMGN alone (76000 +/- 14719.2 micro(2) and 576666.7 +/- 131233.3 micro(3), respectively). CONCLUSION The present study is probably the first systematic analysis of stereologic parameters in renal biopsies of IMGN with FSGS. Our results objectively demonstrate the glomerular enlargement in the non-sclerosed glomeruli in cases of IMGN with FSGS. This detection of enlarged glomeruli may serve to alert the renal pathologist to the possibility of coexisting FSGS, which is a poor prognostic factor in IMGN.
TLR9 and STING agonists synergistically induce innate and adaptive type-II IFN

Agonists for TLR9 and Stimulator of IFN Gene (STING) act as vaccine adjuvants that induce type‐1 immune responses. However, currently available CpG oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) (K‐type) induces IFNs only weakly and STING ligands rather induce type‐2 immune responses, limiting their potential therapeutic applications. Here, we show a potent synergism between TLR9 and STING agonists. Together, they make an effective type‐1 adjuvant and an anticancer agent. The synergistic effect between CpG ODN (K3) and STING‐ligand cyclic GMP–AMP (cGAMP), culminating in NK cell IFN‐γ (type‐II IFN) production, is due to the concurrent effects of IL‐12 and type‐I IFNs, which are differentially regulated by IRF3/7, STING, and MyD88. The combination of CpG ODN with cGAMP is a potent type‐1 adjuvant, capable of inducing strong Th1‐type responses, as demonstrated by enhanced antigen‐specific IgG2c and IFN‐γ production, as well as cytotoxic CD8+ T‐cell responses. In our murine tumor models, intratumoral injection of CpG ODN and cGAMP together reduced tumor size significantly compared with the singular treatments, acting as an antigen‐free anticancer agent. Thus, the combination of CpG ODN and a STING ligand may offer therapeutic application as a potent type‐II IFN inducer.
Regional topological segmentation based on mutual information graphs

When people communicate with robots, the most intuitive mean is by naming the different regions in the environment. The capability that robots are able to identify different regions highly depends on the unsupervised topological segmentation results. This paper addresses the problem of segmenting a metric map into regions. Nowadays many researches in this direction develop approaches based on spectral clustering. However there are inherent drawbacks of spectral clustering algorithms. In this paper, we first discuss these drawbacks using several testing results; then we propose our approach based on information theory which uses Chow-Liu tree to segment the composed graph according to the weight differences. The results show that our method provides more flexible and faster results in the sense of facilitating semantic mapping or further applications.
Syntactic and semantic predictors of tense in Hindi: An ERP investigation

Although there is broad agreement that error signals generated during an unexpected linguistic event are reflected in event-related potential (ERP) components, there are at least two distinct aspects of the process that the ERP signals may reflect. The first is the content of an error, which is the local discrepancy between an observed form and any expectations about upcoming forms, without any reference to why those expectations were held. The second aspect is the cause of an error, which is a context-aware analysis of why the error arose. The current study examines the processes involved in prediction of morphological marking on verbal forms in Hindi, a split ergative language. This is a case where an error with the same local characteristics (illicit morphology) can arise from very different cues: one syntactic in origin (ergative case marking), and the other semantic in origin (a past tense adverbial). Results suggest that the parser indeed tracks the cause in addition to the content of errors. Despite the fact that the critical manipulation of verb marking was identical across cue types, the nature of the cue led to distinct patterns of ERPs in response to anomalous verbal morphology. When verbal morphology was predicted based upon semantic cues, an incorrect future tense form elicited an early negativity in the 200–400 ms interval with a posterior distribution along with a marginally significant P600 effect. In contrast, when verbal morphology was predicted based upon morphosyntactic cues, an incorrect future tense form elicited a right-lateralised anterior negativity (RAN) during the 300–500 ms interval, as well as a P600 response with a broad distribution.