Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-Domain Semi-Supervised Learning Using Feature Formulation

Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL) traditionally makes use of unlabeled samples by including them into the training set through an automated labeling process. Such a primitive Semi-Supervised Learning (pSSL) approach suffers from a number of disadvantages including false labeling and incapable of utilizing out-of-domain samples. In this paper, we propose a formative Semi-Supervised Learning (fSSL) framework which explores hidden features between labeled and unlabeled samples to achieve semi-supervised learning. fSSL regards that both labeled and unlabeled samples are generated from some hidden concepts with labeling information partially observable for some samples. The key of the fSSL is to recover the hidden concepts, and take them as new features to link labeled and unlabeled samples for semi-supervised learning. Because unlabeled samples are only used to generate new features, but not to be explicitly included in the training set like pSSL does, fSSL overcomes the inherent disadvantages of the traditional pSSL methods, especially for samples not within the same domain as the labeled instances. Experimental results and comparisons demonstrate that fSSL significantly outperforms pSSL-based methods for both within-domain and cross-domain semi-supervised learning.
General Framework for Consistent Sampling in Hilbert Spaces

We introduce a general framework for consistent linear reconstruction in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We study stable reconstructions in terms of Riesz bases and frames, and generalize the notion of oblique dual frames to infinite-dimensional frames. As we show, the linear reconstruction scheme coincides with the so-called oblique projection, which turns into an ordinary orthogonal projection when adapting the inner product. The inner product of interest is, in general, not unique. We characterize the inner products and corresponding positive operators for which the new geometrical interpretation applies.
Routine Cell Phone Activity and Exposure to Sext Messages

Increased cell phone use among adolescents has created new opportunities for deviance and victimization in recent years. One teenage cell phone−based behavior that has received increased attention from a variety of sources including public health researchers, parents, and law enforcement is “sexting” (i.e., a minor receiving sexually explicit photos or videos of another adolescent or adult via cell phone or sending such material to another teenager). Research has revealed that sexting is a risky form of adolescent deviance that is linked with a host of potential negative health consequences (e.g., risky sexual behavior and drug use) and legal ramifications. Despite the importance of the issue, research exploring the risk factors associated with exposure to sexts is virtually nonexistent. Using telephone interview data from a representative sample of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, the present study applies routine activity theory to explain the receiving of sexts. The results confirm expectations that both exposure-based (e.g., use of a cell phone during school hours) and supervision-based (i.e., school cell phone rules and family cell phone plan) routine cell phone activities are associated with receiving sexts. Overall, the study extends the generality of routine activity theory to teenage sexting, highlights the utility of examining domain-specific routine activity indicators, and offers one of the first theoretically informed analyses concerning the factors associated with adolescent sexting.
Transport Architectures for an Evolving Internet by Keith Winstein

In the Internet architecture, transport protocols are the glue between an application’s needs and the network’s abilities. But as the Internet has evolved over the last 30 years, the implicit assumptions of these protocols have held less and less well. This can cause poor performance on newer networks—cellular networks, datacenters—and makes it challenging to roll out networking technologies that break markedly with the past. Working with collaborators at MIT, I have built two systems that explore an objective-driven, computer-generated approach to protocol design. My thesis is that making protocols a function of stated assumptions and objectives can improve application performance and free network technologies to evolve. Sprout, a transport protocol designed for videoconferencing over cellular networks, uses probabilistic inference to forecast network congestion in advance. On commercial cellular networks, Sprout gives 2-to-4 times the throughput and 7-to-9 times less delay than Skype, Apple Facetime, and Google Hangouts. This work led to Remy, a tool that programmatically generates protocols for an uncertain multi-agent network. Remy’s computer-generated algorithms can achieve higher performance and greater fairness than some sophisticated human-designed schemes, including ones that put intelligence inside the network. The Remy tool can then be used to probe the difficulty of the congestion control problem itself—how easy is it to “learn” a network protocol to achieve desired goals, given a necessarily imperfect model of the networks where it ultimately will be deployed? We found weak evidence of a tradeoff between the breadth of the operating range of a computer-generated protocol and its performance, but also that a single computergenerated protocol was able to outperform existing schemes over a thousand-fold range of link rates. Thesis Supervisor: Hari Balakrishnan Title: Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Carcinogen metabolism genes, red meat and poultry intake, and colorectal cancer risk

Diets high in red meat are established risk factors for colorectal cancer (CRC). Carcinogenic compounds generated during meat cooking have been implicated as causal agents. We conducted a family‐based case‐control study to investigate the association between polymorphisms in carcinogen metabolism genes (CYP1A2 ‐154A>C, CYP1B1 Leu432Val, CYP2E1 ‐1054C>T, GSTP1 Ile105Val, PTGS2 5UTR ‐765, EPHX1 Tyr113His, NAT2 Ile114Thr, NAT2 Arg197Gln and NAT2 Gly286Glu) and CRC risk. We tested for gene‐environment interactions using case‐only analyses (N = 577) and compared statistically significant results to those obtained using case‐unaffected sibling comparisons (N = 307 sibships). Our results suggested that CYP1A2 ‐154A>C might modify the association between intake of red meat cooked using high temperature methods and well done on the inside and CRC risk (case‐only interaction OR = 1.53; 95% CI = 1.19–1.97; p = 0.0008) and the association between intake of red meat heavily browned on the outside and rectal cancer risk (case‐only interaction OR = 0.65; 95% CI = 0.48–0.86; p = 0.003). We also found that GSTP1 Ile105Val might modify the association between intake of poultry cooked with high temperature methods and CRC risk (p = 0.0035), a finding that was stronger among rectal cancer cases. Our results support a role for heterocyclic amines that form in red meat as a potential explanation for the observed association between diets high in red meat and CRC. Our findings also suggest a possible role for diets high in poultry cooked at high temperatures in CRC risk.
Direct and indirect effects of false safety behaviors on cannabis use and related problems

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In light of increasing rates of cannabis use and use-related problems, efforts to understand malleable psychological vulnerability factors related to use and related problems remain important as they can inform prevention and treatment efforts. Recent data indicate that false safety behaviors (FSB; ie, behaviors that may be effective in decreasing anxiety in the short-term, but can maintain and even exacerbate anxiety in the long-term) are related to cannabis problem severity. Thus, an important next step is to identify factors implicated in the relation between FSB and cannabis use behavior. The current study tested whether FSB were uniquely related to cannabis use problems and high-risk cannabis use motives. We also tested whether FSB were indirectly related to cannabis outcomes via high-risk motives. METHOD The sample consisted of 349 current (69.6% female) cannabis-using undergraduates who completed an online survey. RESULTS FSB was robustly related to cannabis-related problems and cannabis use motives (ie, coping and availability) after controlling for anxiety and cannabis use frequency. FSB was indirectly related to cannabis problems via coping and availability motives and to cannabis use frequency via coping motives. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Results add to a growing literature indicating that FSB are related to cannabis problem severity and extend this work by identifying mechanisms underlying this relationship. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE Data indicate that FSB may be an under recognized, yet clinically important, vulnerability factor related to cannabis use problems. (Am J Addict 2018;27:29-34).
Improvements in the Signal-to-Noise Ratio of Motor Cortex Cells Distinguish Early versus Late Phases of Motor Skill Learning

There are numerous experience-driven changes in cortical circuitry that correlate with improved performance. Improved motor performance on a reach-to-grasp task in rodents is associated with changes in long-term potentiation (LTP), synaptogenesis, and movement representations in primary motor cortex (M1) by training days 3, 7, and 10, respectively. We recorded single-cell activity patterns in M1 during reach-to-grasp training to test how neural-spiking properties change with respect to LTP, synaptogenesis, and motor map changes. We also tested how neural-spiking changes relate directly to improved performance by monitoring muscle activity patterns. We found that signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of M1 spiking were significantly improved with practice but only after 7-12 d. Three sources of noise were assessed: signal-dependent noise exemplified by the slope of the relationship between mean spike count and count variance per burst, signal-independent noise exemplified by the offset of this relationship, and background firing rates before and after bursts. Signal-independent noise and pre-burst firing rates were reduced with practice. Early performance gains (days 1-6) were dissociated from SNR improvements, whereas later performance gains (day 7-12) were related directly to the magnitude of improvement in both muscle recruitment reliability and success rates. With training, an increased number of cells exhibited firing rates that were correlated with muscle recruitment patterns, with lags suggesting a primary direction of influence from M1 to muscles. These results suggest a functional linkage from local synaptogenesis in M1 to improved spiking reliability of M1 cells to more reliable recruitment of muscles and finally to improved behavioral performance.
Helminth communities of four commercially important fish species from Chetumal Bay, Mexico

Abstract The relative importance of ecology and evolution as factors determining species richness and composition of the helminth communities of fish is a matter of current debate. Theoretical studies use host–parasite lists, but these do not include studies on a temporal or spatial scale. Local environmental conditions and host biological characteristics are shown to influence helminth species richness and composition in four fish species (Eugerres plumieri, Hexanematichthys assimilis, Oligoplites saurus, and Scomberomorus maculatus) in Chetumal Bay, Mexico. With the exception of H. assimilis, the helminth communities had not been previously studied and possible associations between environmental and host biological characteristics as factors determining helminth species richness and composition using redundancy analysis (RDA) are described. Thirty-four helminth species are identified, with the highest number of species (19 total (mean = 6.3 ± 2.1)) and the lowest (9 (4.0 ± 1.0)) occurring in H. assimilis and S. maculatus, respectively. The larval nematodes Contracaecum sp. and Pseudoterranova sp. were not only the helminth species shared by all four host species but also were the most prevalent and abundant. Statistical associations between helminth community parameters and local ecological variables such as host habitat use, feeding habits, mobility, and time of residence in coastal lagoons are identified. Phylogeny is important because it clearly separates all four host species by their specialist parasites, although specific habitat and feeding habits also significantly influence the differentiation between the four fish species.
A robotics toolbox for MATLAB

The Robotics Toolbox is a software package that allows a MATLAB user to readily create and manipulate datatypes fundamental to robotics such as homogeneous transformations, quaternions and trajectories. Functions provided, for arbitrary serial-link manipulators, include forward and inverse kinematics, Jacobians, and forward and inverse dynamics. This article introduces the Toolbox in tutorial form, with examples chosen to demonstrate a range of capabilities. The complete Toolbox and documentation is freely available via anonymous ftp.
Argon Ion and Neutral Metastable Levels Destruction in a Magnetically Enhanced Inductively Coupled Plasma Reactor

This paper deals with pure argon plasma studied in a magnetically enhanced inductively coupled reactor. Laser induced fluorescence technique was performed with an optical parametric oscillator laser on the 3d 4 F7/2 and 3d 2 G9/2 Ar + metastable levels and on the (2P3/2 0 )4s 2 neutral metastable state to determine their relative densities. Langmuir probe was used as a complementary diagnostic to measure the electron energy distribution functions. When increasing the confinement magnetic field, the metastable state density collapses for all cited levels, by contrast with n e which is continuously growing. Calculations were carried out for neutral argon to explain this behaviour. The results show that the metastable population is depleted by electron-impact excitation and ionization, these loss processes becoming dominant compared to the metastable state creation term.
Optimizing Referential Coherence in Text Generation

This article describes an implemented system which uses centering theory for planning of coherent texts and choice of referring expressions. We argue that text and sentence planning need to be driven in part by the goal of maintaining referential continuity and thereby facilitating pronoun resolution: Obtaining a favorable ordering of clauses, and of arguments within clauses, is likely to increase opportunities for nonambiguous pronoun use. Centering theory provides the basis for such an integrated approach. Generating coherent texts according to centering theory is treated as a constraint satisfaction problem. The well-known Rule 2 of centering theory is reformulated in terms of a set of constraintscohesion, salience, cheapness, and continuityand we show sample outputs obtained under a particular weighting of these constraints. This framework facilitates detailed research into evaluation metrics and will therefore provide a productive research tool in addition to the immediate practical benefit of improving the fluency and readability of generated texts. The technique is generally applicable to natural language generation systems, which perform hierarchical text structuring based on a theory of coherence relations with certain additional assumptions.
Area spectral efficiency performance comparison of downlink fractional frequency reuse schemes for MIMO heterogeneous networks

In cellular networks, fractional frequency reuse (FFR) is an effective inter-cell interference mitigation technique to achieve significant coverage improvement for cell edge users. Area Spectral Efficiency (ASE) is an important and vital factor to be improved in cellular networks and is defined as the number of transmitted information bits per unit area per unit time per unit bandwidth (i.e., bps/Hz/m2). In this paper, we compare ASE of different downlink FFR schemes in MIMO Heterogeneous cellular networks (MIMO HetNets), where the base station (BS) locations are modeled using Poission Point Process (PPP). Stochastic PPP is widely used in the design and analysis of signal processing algorithms especially for communication systems. ASEs are evaluated based on coverage probability functions for Strict FFR and Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) in MIMO HetNets for both closed and open access cases. In the same time we illustrate not only the role but also the benefits of utilizing PPP in modeling the BS locations for analytical evaluation of two main types of FFR deployments. Numerical results show that, for SFR in both open and closed access cases, it is better to use MIMO HetNets than other techniques due to large interference resulted from utilizing the whole bandwidth inside the cell. Also, in SFR case, ASE is directly proportional to the power control factor βk. For Strict FFR MIMO HetNet open access case, SDMA with large numbers of antenna provides higher ASE at the expense of system complexity. For better ASE in MIMO HetNet system, it is recommended to use adaptive technique between strict FFR MIMO and MU-MIMO in terms of target threshold value of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR).
Evaluation of intelligent camera control systems based on cognitive models of comprehension

We propose a novel evaluation methodology for intelligent camera control systems based on established techniques of measuring story comprehension from cognitive psychology. The proposed methodology can be used specifically for evaluating the effectiveness of the camera system in communicating the story. We introduce a psychological model of question answering called QUEST and present a preliminary evaluation design of videos automatically generated by Darshak, an intelligent cinematic camera planning system. Initial results from our analysis are encouraging and motivate further work in evaluation of intelligent camera control systems as well as cognitive models of story comprehension through the visual medium.
Modularity Hypothesis: Presentation and Analysis

The project of this paper is to present a detailed description of modularity hypothesis, its versions, its major schools of thought, its evolutionary aspects, and inherent problems. This hypothesis suggests that the human mind is compartmentalized into components or modules, which are specialized on certain types of information. This is the gist of strong version of modularity hypothesis, which is a direct hypothesis on mind and comprehension. The weak version is concerned with the descriptive aspects of discourse organization. The paper also reviews the major research studies relevant to the occurrence of pragmatic module. This has been supported by pieces of evidence from aphasia, right hemisphere damage, autism, Theory of Mind, and developmental pathology. With this survey of literature as a backdrop, we have suggested a bus-oriented modular system of mind from a semantic-pragmatic perspective.
To Herd or Not to Herd : Do Mimicking Traders Ignore Their Private Information ?

The theory of informational cascades culminating in Grenadier (1999) shows that rational investors who receive private signals and observe each other’s trades, trade in sequence: those with stronger signals trade first. Investors who follow earlier trades do not ‘herd’, unless acting contrary to their own signals. We built a set of observations of fund managers’ daily trades, unique proxies for trades’ informational content based on inferences from ‘stealth trading,’ and whether or not private information is acted upon. This enabled us to conduct the first test of herding models. We find that fund managers do trade in sequence, in support of an earlier conjecture. They also identify the most valuable leader trades to mimic. There is little evidence of herding other than for a horizon of a year with four or more followers.
A Novel Self-Packaged Substrate Integrated Suspended Line Quasi-Yagi Antenna

A novel self-packaged quasi-Yagi antenna based on substrate integrated suspended line (SISL) is proposed. The proposed antenna is designed to be self-packaged using five substrates with embedded air cavities and transitions for broadband operation. The main radiation element of the proposed SISL antenna uses a suspended bow-tie driver dipole with a director. The broadband transitions are designed for the differential drive of the antenna and the lowest operating frequency extended. The well-agreed results between the measurement and simulation show that the proposed SISL antenna achieves the bandwidth ratio of 2.97:1, i.e., from 3.2 to 9.5 GHz with S11 <; -10 dB. The maximum gain of 8.1 dB and low cross polarization less than -12.5 dB are achieved. Moreover, the proposed antenna provides stable radiation patterns over the operating frequency.
DISTRIBUTED SIMULATION OF A LARGE-SCALE RADIO NETWORK

1. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been increased interest in the simulation of large-scale radio networks. Two major and conflicting obstacles in the simulation of large-scale radio networks are the simulation run time and the accuracy of the simulation results. Since all projects have time constrains, it is often not impossible to conduct lengthy simulation experiments. In our experience, for example, it frequently takes 18 hours to simulate a 120-node radio network with a very detailed model on a top-of-the-line Sun workstation. For larger networks, run times are often impractically long. On the other hand, if a simplified model is used, the results may not be accurate enough for analysis purposes. In [1], we proposed an approach to the simulation of large-scale network by distributing the computation load of a simulation among several workstations. This not only reduces the memory requirements on each workstation but also reduces the execution time (due to parallelism). The simulation architecture introduced in [1] utilizes commercial off-the-shelf software and hardware. OPNET is selected as the tool for network simulation while a fiber-optic ring network is used for communication among workstations. Using a conservative approach [2], a controller is utilized to synchronize execution of events in the workstations. Our distributed simulation system has several advantages. First, it is independent of network topology and its complexity. Second, it is independent of the model and the speed of the workstations used. Third, there is no dependence on the amount of traffic in the network. That is, any traffic, light or heavy, can be used in the simulation. Fourth, there are no restrictions on the type of protocol selected. This means any protocol can be implemented with complete conformity. In addition to the analysis of large-scale static networks, we are interested in the simulation of large-scale dynamic networks. In a mobile environment, the nodes move in a random or predetermined fashion and it is often difficult to track the evolution of the network topology without a graphical display. To solve this problem, we developed a WIN NT program to monitor the progress of the simulation.
Automatic extraction of pornographic contents using radon transform based audio features

This paper focuses on the problem of classifying pornographic sounds, such as sexual scream or moan, to detect and block the objectionable multimedia contents. To represent the large temporal variations of pornographic sounds, we propose a novel feature extraction method based on Radon transform. Radon transform provides a way to extract the global trend of orientations in a 2-D region and therefore it is applicable to the time-frequency spectrograms in the long-range segment to capture the large temporal variations of sexual sounds. Radon feature is extracted using histograms and flux of Radon coefficients. We adopt Gaussian mixture model to statistically represent the pornographic and non-pornographic sounds, and the test sounds are classified by using likelihood ratio test. Evaluations on several hundred pornographic and non-pornographic sound clips indicate that the proposed features can achieve satisfactory results that this approach could be used as an alternative to the image-based methods.