Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Capacity-Achieving Codes for Noisy Channels with Bounded Graphical Complexity and Maximum Likelihood Decoding

In this paper, capacity-achieving codes for memoryless binary-input output-symmetric (MBIOS) channels under maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding with bounded graphical complexity are investigated. The graphical complexity of a code is defined as the number of edges in the graphical representation of the code per information bit and is proportional to the decoding complexity per information bit per iteration under iterative decoding. Irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes are studied first. By deriving their asymptotic average weight distribution (AAWD) it is shown that simple nonsystematic IRA ensembles outperform systematic IRA and regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) ensembles with the same graphical complexity, and are only 0.124 dB away from the Shannon limit for the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) channel. However, a conclusive result as to whether these nonsystematic IRA codes can really achieve capacity cannot be reached. Motivated by this inconclusive result, a new family of codes is proposed, called low-density parity-check and generator matrix (LDPC-GM) codes, which are serially concatenated codes with an outer LDPC code and an inner low-density generator matrix (LDGM) code. It is proved that these codes can achieve capacity on any MBIOS channel using ML decoding and also achieve capacity on any BEC using belief propagation (BP) decoding, both with bounded graphical complexity. Moreover, these codes are shown to have linearly increasing minimum distances and achieve the asymptotic Gilbert-Varshamov bound for all rates. 2
INVESTIGATING INSTRUCTORS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE USE OF HUMOUR IN HIGHER EDUCATION

In psychology, humour refers to ‘a specific positive emotion that is elicited by the perception of playful incongruity, usually occurs in an interpersonal context, and is typically expressed by laughter’ (Martin, 2007). Existing literature has shown that it is a useful tool in teaching various subjects especially in primary and secondary education. Our study was designed to scrutinize the perceptions of EFL instructors on the use of humour in higher education to reveal whether this is also true for higher education. 42 EFL instructors working at school of foreign languages at three state universities in Turkey participated in this study. A questionnaire consisting of multiple choice and open-ended items was prepared and administered to the participants administered to elicit their opinions on the significance of humour in language education offered to undergraduate students who would attend various programmes in the following academic year. The overall qualitative and quantitative analysis of the findings demonstrated that the EFL instructors tend to have positive perceptions about the use of humour in language classes; however, they have slight hesitations with its use. The study ends with a couple of pedagogical implications on related findings, and a few suggestions for further research. Article visualizations:
Optimizing the number of states, training iterations and Gaussians in an HMM-based handwritten word recognizer

In off-line handwriting recognition, classifiers based on hidden Markov models (HMMs) have become very popular. However, while there exist well-established training algorithms, such as the Baum-Welsh procedure, which optimize the transition and output probabilities of a given HMM architecture, the architecture itself, and in particular the number of states, must be chosen "by hand". Also the number of training iterations and the output distributions need to be defined by the system designer. In this paper we examine some optimization strategies for an HMM classifier that works with continuous feature values and uses the Baum-Welch training algorithm. The free parameters of the optimization procedure introduced in this paper are the number of states of a model, the number of training iterations, and the number of Gaussian mixtures for each state. The proposed optimization strategies are evaluated in the context of a handwritten word recognition task.
On the Influence of an Iterative Affect Annotation Approach on Inter-Observer and Self-Observer Reliability

Affect detection systems require reliable methods to annotate affective data. Typically, two or more observers independently annotate audio-visual affective data. This approach results in inter-observer reliabilities that can be categorized as fair (Cohen's kappas of approximately .40). In an alternative iterative approach, observers independently annotate small amounts of data, discuss their annotations, and annotate a different sample of data. After a pre-determined reliability threshold is reached, the observers independently annotate the remainder of the data. The effectiveness of the iterative approach was tested in an annotation study where pairs of observers annotated affective video data in nine annotate-discuss iterations. Self-annotations were previously collected on the same data. Mixed effects linear regression models indicated that inter-observer agreement increased (unstandardized coefficient B = .031) across iterations, with agreement in the final iteration reflecting a 64 percent improvement over the first iteration. Follow-up analyses indicated that the improvement was nonlinear in that most of the improvement occurred after the first three iterations (B = .043), after which agreement plateaued (B ≈ 0). There was no notable complementary improvement (B ≈ 0) in self-observer agreement, which was considerably lower than observer-observer agreement. Strengths, limitations, and applications of the iterative affective annotation approach are discussed.
C-SWF: A Lightweight Scientific Workflow System for Astronomical Data Processing

Due to the urgent requirements of mass data processing in the field of astronomy, with the advent of network grid computing technique, scientific workflow technique was presented and quickly adopted for distributed astronomic data processing. However, current existing scientific workflow systems are too complex and enormous in system deploying and system manipulation. Few people can master it in short period. In this paper, we presented a lightweight scientific workflow system, C-SWF, which is specially designed for astronomy. All required fundamental functions, such as task customization, data movement, provenance and task re-run mechanisms, are fully implemented. Comparing with the existing scientific workflow system, C-SWF provides many useful features such as simple, high performance and easy to deploy in order to meet the requirements of astronomers.
Visual-FIR: A new platform for modeling and prediction of dynamical Systems

In this research, a new platform for the Fuzzy Inductive Reasoning (FIR) methodology has been designed and developed under the Matlab environment. The new tool, named Visual-FIR, allows the identification of dynamic systems models in a user-friendly environment. FIR offers a model-based approach to modeling and predicting either univariate or multivariate time series. Previous uses of FIR had demonstrated the high potential of this qualitative modeling and simulation methodology in effectively dealing with applications from various areas such as control, biology, and medicine. However, the available implementation of FIR was such that new code had to be developed for each new application studied, reducing considerably the interest in this methodology for the occasional user, and making it tedious even for expert programmers. Visual-FIR resolves this limitation, and offers a high efficiency implementation of the FIR methodology. Furthermore, the Visual-FIR platform adds new features to previous implementations, increasing the overall capabilities of the FIR methodology.
Transfer-printing of active layers to achieve high quality interfaces in sequentially deposited multilayer inverted polymer solar cells fabricated in air

Abstract Polymer solar cells (PSCs) are greatly influenced by both the vertical concentration gradient in the active layer and the quality of the various interfaces. To achieve vertical concentration gradients in inverted PSCs, a sequential deposition approach is necessary. However, a direct approach to sequential deposition by spin-coating results in partial dissolution of the underlying layers which decreases the control over the process and results in not well-defined interfaces. Here, we demonstrate that by using a transfer-printing process based on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamps we can obtain increased control over the thickness of the various layers while at the same time increasing the quality of the interfaces and the overall concentration gradient within the active layer of PSCs prepared in air. To optimize the process and understand the influence of various interlayers, our approach is based on surface free energy, spreading parameters and work of adhesion calculations. The key parameter presented here is the insertion of high quality hole transporting and electron transporting layers, respectively above and underneath the active layer of the inverted structure PSC which not only facilitates the transfer process but also induces the adequate vertical concentration gradient in the device to facilitate charge extraction. The resulting non-encapsulated devices (active layer prepared in air) demonstrate over 40% increase in power conversion efficiency with respect to the reference spin-coated inverted PSCs.
Capacity bounds for the discrete superposition model of the Gaussian multiple-access channel

Recently, it has been shown that the capacity of certain Gaussian networks can be approximated by the capacity of the corresponding network in the discrete superposition model (DSM) [1], [2]. The gap between the capacities is an additive constant only depending on the number of nodes in the network. Hence, the capacity in the DSM is a good approximation in the high SNR regime. Finding this capacity involves optimizing over a finite set of coding strategies. However, the problem space grows with both the number of nodes and with SNR, rendering the optimization infeasible. In this paper we find upper and lower bounds on the capacity in the DSM. We start with the point-to-point channel, and we extend our strategy to the multiple-access channel. We show that the gap between our bounds is at most an additive constant independent of the channel gains. Hence, combining our results with the results of [1], [2], we find closed form bounds on the Gaussian capacity to within an additive constant.
A Generalized Wreath Product Method for the Enumeration of Stereo and Position Isomers of Polysubstituted Organic Compounds

Extensive expositions of the isomer enumeration methods can be found in the review Dipers of Rouvray [1, 2]. The problem of enumerating isomers essentially reduces to finding what is known as the cycle index of a permutation group [3] and then obtaining a generating function for isomers using a theorem of Polya [3]. Read [4] stated that a method is yet to be developed for the enumeration of stereo-isomers of polysubstituted organic compounds. Read [5] recently enumerated the stereoisomers of certain specific compounds like C,Hz,XY, where X and Y are attached to the end carbons. We report here a general method for the enumeration of stereo and position isomers of polysubstituted organic compounds containing any number of functional groups. The group of permutations for the enumeration of isomers at room temperature should contain the point group operations and the permutations induced by any additional internal degrees of freedom. Leonard [6, 7] enumerated the isomers of nonrigid cyclohexane molecules by including the permutations induced by a ring-flip operator in the permutation group of the rigid molecule. Davidson [8] investigated the three-fold rotors in alkanes, two-fold rotors in polyphenyls and certain higher-fold rotors in metal complexes from the standpoint
Implications and impacts of transforming lognormal variables into normal variables in VAR S

In this paper we compare two different approaches to deal with lognormal variables/observations, and hence their errors, in a 3-dimensional variational data assimilation framework. The first approach uses a transform to make the lognormal random variable into a normal random variable and hence use current data assimilation techniques. The second approach uses the correct distribution for a collection of normal and lognormal random variables through a hybrid distribution which gives a different cost function to minimise. The properties of these two different approaches is that the first finds an analysis median whilst the second find the analysis mode. The two are compared with the Lorenz 1963 model with different observational error variances and different times between the observations. The second approach out-performs the first here but the first is often used in operational centres with a form of bias correction and so we discuss this implication at the end of the paper.
COMPARING FACES: A COMPUTATIONAL AND PERCEPTUAL STUDY

The problem of extracting distinctive parts from a face is addressed. Rather than examining a priori specified features such as nose, eyes, month or others, the aim here is to extract from a face the most distinguishing or dissimilar parts with respect to another given face, i.e. finding differences between faces. A computational approach, based on log polar patch sampling and evaluation, has been compared with results obtained from a newly designed perceptual test involving 45 people. The results of the comparison confirm the potential of the proposed computational method.
Lexical Semantics Domain Model for Information Extraction

The domain of operating system reference manuals uses linguistic constructs that are difficult to process since many terms are similar and most concepts are abstract software engineering constructs. The SIFT system for automatic test generation from these documents uses a natural-languagebased formalism for software domain models. The formalism is based on the generative lexicon framework (Pustejovsky 1995). Examples show how this model is used for information extraction from texts in the software
From ‘having the will’ to ‘knowing the way’: Incremental transformation for poverty alleviation among rural women in Bangladesh

Short-term, linear, externally funded, project-based approaches to complex problems like women's poverty in rural Bangladesh are often unsuccessful. Taking a different approach, this paper documents a transdisciplinary action-research methodology that led to sustainable poverty alleviation for rural Bangladeshi women, gradual changes in gender relations at the household and community level and strengthened women's capabilities while simultaneously developing an approach to social entrepreneurship. Defining characteristics of this research process were clear articulation of objectives in which poverty alleviation always received priority, learning cycles in which women were the central actors of the research-action process, and fluid and changing leadership among different stakeholders at different stages in the process. The project demonstrates the strength of action-research in addressing complex challenges, such as poverty alleviation and unequal gender relations. Key lessons for development practice include the need for interventions that take place over a longer time-frame and for a vision of development that is not transformational but comprising small incremental, locally embedded changes and which recognises the role of social capital.
Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect from quasar-driven blast waves

Quasar-driven winds are currently the best candidates for accounting for the preheating of the intergalactic medium in clusters. Such winds, occurring during early phases of the evolution of spheroidal galaxies, shock-heat the interstellar gas, thus inducing a detectable Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. We estimate the amplitude and the angular scale of such effect as well as its counts as a function of the comptonization parameter y. The contamination due to radio emission by the quasar itself is also discussed. The corresponding mean Compton distortion of the cosmic microwave background spectrum is found to be well below the COBE/FIRAS upper limit.
Consequences of postnatal stress: maternal separation in rats induces long-lasting changes on glutamate transporters

Background: There is increasing evidence that environmental factors, particularly stressful events experienced early in life, increase the risk of developing a psychiatric illness and/or a behavioural disorder. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of acute and chronic maternal separation (AMS and CMS) plus cold stress on the expression patterns of Glutamate Transporters (TGlus) in the developing and young adult Central Nervous System (CNS). As regulation of Glutamate (Glu) extracellular levels is of key importance, sodium-dependent Glu uptake using synaptosome-enriched fractions isolated from Frontal Cortex (FC) and Hippocampus (Hic) was also studied. Results: In animals under AMS stress found that Glu uptake decreases with respect to control groups. Meanwhile in CMS did not observe changes on Glu uptake in adult animals. These data would suggest the existence of an adaptive mechanism that could compensate the effect of AMS and CMS plus cold stress on glutamate uptake. Western blotting was performed in homogenates prepared from FC and Hic from both neonate and young adult rat brains. These blots exposed that homogenates include GLT-1 and EAAC-1 proteins and their levels varied in different areas of the rat brain and with the age of animals. Conclusions: During early postnatal life, exposure to various stressors lead to the development of various neurological, psychiatric, neurodegenerative and behavioral disorders, expressible in adult life in the case of chronic stress. These results demonstrate that adverse early life events have profound and persistent effects on brain function and may represent a risk factor for the development of psychopathology later life.
An Examination of Sub-Clinical Paranoia in a Correctional Setting

Research suggests environmental factors may lead to higher levels of paranoid ideation due to the possibility of harm and self-consciousness present in these situations. The effect of incarceration on paranoia has received limited investigation. In the present study, 66 incarcerated and 88 control participants completed measures of paranoid ideation and a measure of self-consciousness. Results showed scores on all of the paranoia measures were significantly higher among incarcerated individuals as compared to controls. A variety of demographic and clinical variables were examined as possible predictors of paranoia, and only public self-consciousness emerged as a significant predictor. These findings support the role of social context in elevated levels of paranoia, particularly in settings where perceived risk of victimization may be higher. The results highlight the importance of attending to paranoia among incarcerated persons.
to Transient Global Cerebral Ischemia Response Up-Regulated in Brain Microglia in Complement C1q Is Dramatically

Petry, Michael Loos and Eberhard WeihePatricia Salvati, Marcello Calabresi, Robert B. Sim, Franz Martin K. -H. Schafer, Wilhelm J. Schwaeble, Claes Post,http://www.jimmunol.org/content/164/10/5446J Immunol€2000; 164:5446-5452; ;Referenceshttp://www.jimmunol.org/content/164/10/5446.full#ref-list-1This article cites 42 articles, 9 of which you can access for free at: Subscriptionshttp://jimmunol.org/subscriptionsInformation about subscribing to The Journal of Immunology is online at: Permissionshttp://www.aai. org/ji/copyright.htmlSubmit copyright permission requests at: Email Alertshttp://jimmunol.org/cgi/alerts/etocReceive free email-alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up at:
Primary Paediatric Bronchial Airway Epithelial Cell in Vitro Responses to Environmental Exposures

The bronchial airway epithelial cell (BAEC) is the site for initial encounters between inhaled environmental factors and the lower respiratory system. Our hypothesis was that release of pro inflammatory interleukins (IL)-6 and IL-8 from primary BAEC cultured from children will be increased after in vitro exposure to common environmental factors. Primary BAEC were obtained from children undergoing clinically indicated routine general anaesthetic procedures. Cells were exposed to three different concentrations of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or house dust mite allergen (HDM) or particulates extracted from side stream cigarette smoke (SSCS). BAEC were obtained from 24 children (mean age 7.0 years) and exposed to stimuli. Compared with the negative control, there was an increase in IL-6 and IL-8 release after exposure to HDM (p ≤ 0.001 for both comparisons). There was reduced IL-6 after higher compared to lower SSCS exposure (p = 0.023). There was no change in BAEC release of IL-6 or IL-8 after LPS exposure. BAEC from children are able to recognise and respond in vitro with enhanced pro inflammatory mediator secretion to some inhaled exposures.
Loop quantum cosmology: II. Volume operators

Volume operators measuring the total volume of space in a loop quantum theory of cosmological models are constructed. In the case of models with rotational symmetry an investigation of the Higgs constraint imposed on the reduced connection variables is necessary, a complete solution of which is given for isotropic models; in this case the volume spectrum can be calculated explicitly. It is observed that the stronger the symmetry conditions are the smaller is the volume spectrum, which can be interpreted as level splitting due to broken symmetries. Some implications for quantum cosmology are presented.
Cross-correlation Coefficient with Considering Lag Time between Extracted RSA Component of HRV and Respiratory Wave -A Suggestion for Exciting Mode Index-

It is well-known that the autonomic nervous system responds in different manners by inducing various emotions. Therefore, we have studied on the responses in human blood circulation evoked by emotional stimuli. In our previous studies, we found different correlations between some parameters of blood circulation with different emotions. These features could be detected more clearly by considering the lag time between the parameters that conducted from the blood circulation control system. Generally speaking, heart rate will increase in an exciting emotion. But this accepted concept was not always true in our previous studies and in some other literatures. Therefore, we developed and discussed the analysis technique for the index of the excitation by focusing on respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) which suggested as the index of rest levels of the cardiopulmonary system. In an exciting state, RSA is expected to decrease because of increasing the demand of oxygen. To find the feature of changes in blood circulation, we measured temporal changes in consecutive blood pressure, ECG and respiratory wave during the emotion of fear, excitation, disgust and sadness, respectively. Each minimum coefficient of cross-correlation between heart rate variability in RSA frequency range and the respiratory wave was sought with considering “the time shift” as a lag time. Consequently, the time series of minimum cross-correlation coefficients varied significantly in an exciting emotion from rest. But, whether the time shift that obtained from the minimum value of cross-correlation coefficients between the parameters could be considered as a lag time of the parameters is open to dispute, we discussed it and obtained reasonable results.