Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Book reviews

P erhaps the only serious misjudgment by the authors throughout this impressive 700-page tome occurs before the first page: the title should be Embodied Cognitive Science: Designing Autonomous Agents. The book is neither as broad as their chosen title suggests nor even about " intelligence " per se. Nor is it about artificial intelligence (AI): " This book does not cover algorithms of classical artificial intelligence " (p. xvii). The authors do cover neural networks quite well, and genetic algorithms, but only to evolve neural controllers for autonomous agents. What their book does cover, in 6 parts and 19 chapters, is the design of agents according to the principles of embodied cognitive science. Their focus is " complete agents " : agents that are autonomous, self-sufficient, embodied , and situated. Half of their accomplishment (a third of the book) is laying out a clear manifesto for embodied cognitive science, presenting arguments on both sides of every issue (e.g., the frame problem, the frame-of-reference problem , simulated vs. robotic agents), explaining the shades of meaning of every important term (e.g., situatedness, domain ontology, emergence), and expertly surveying the vast relevant multidisciplinary literature. The other half of their accomplishment (half the book) is writing a detailed guide to autonomous agent design. Starting from a carefully argued list of design principles, they cover: Braitenberg vehicles; the subsumption architecture and, more generally, the design of parallel, loosely coupled processes; senso-ry–motor coordination; redundancy, parsimo-ny, and other design principles; and value-based learning. Throughout they use a series of robots as illustrations, including Cog, Ghengis, Shabot, Didabots, and several of their own garbage-collection robots. For the last they sometimes include a wealth of detail, such as real sensor data and motor activation time-plots. I wished they had introduced the RoboCup competition before page 615, and it is a shame that by publication, efforts were only " underway to equip Technic Lego kits with robotic capacities " (p. 618). However, they deploy, in general, an effective set of representative robots to support their discussion. The writing is uniformly clear but rarely elegant. I found only one typo per hundred pages. The book is remarkably reader-friendly: each part and each chapter starts with an overview, each chapter ends with " Issues to Think About, " " Points to Remember, " and an annotated bibliography. Focus boxes and tables and figures are effective throughout (although the cartoons were ineffective). The …
When a Little Dirt Doesn’t Hurt : The Effect of Family Size on Child Health Outcomes

: This paper studies the causal effect of family size on children’s health. We formulate a model of child health production where family size has a negative effect on child health due to resource dilution but a positive effect due to a positive effect on the development of the immune system, as proposed by the hygiene hypothesis. We use a large dataset on the entire Swedish male birth cohorts between 1965 and 1978 to evaluate which effect that dominates. We use the occurrence of twin births as exogenous shifts in family size. Overall, our results suggest that family size has a positive effect on general health outcomes. This suggests that the mechanism proposed in the hygiene hypothesis dominates the mechanism proposed in the quantity-quality model.
Organization structure and structural change in European manufacturing organisations

The paper considers two approaches to the study of the impact of national cultures on the structure of organizations; viz: culture free and culture bound approaches. Af ter a discussion of the problems of obtaining comparable data in cross-cultural research, the preliminary results of a comparative study of large manufacturing organizations in six countries in Europe are presented. The results suggest that while formal organizational authority structures appear to be culture free reflecting the impact of strategic contingencies, use of coordination techniques, such as regular top management meetings and task forces, is more affected by cultural factors. Introduction: the convergence debate The debate on the impact of national or regional cultures on the behaviour of people within organizations has long been a concern of organization theorists. Initial attempts were made to document and explain varia ti ons in management practices (e.g. Granick, 1962; Haire et al. , 1966; Dore, 1973) and despite considerable theoretical and methodological difficulties (Roberts, 1970; Child, 1981; Adler, 1984; Cl ark and Mallory, 1992) comparative research using a variety of approaches and instruments has flourished (e.g. Lammers and Hickson, 1979; Hickson and MacMillan, 1980; Hofstede, 1980; Martin and Glisson, 1989; Calori and Lawrence, 1992). Much ofthis work has cenDerek Pugh, Timothy Clark and Geoff Mallory tered on the degree of influence exerted by culture on the structure of organizations and the behaviour of people working within them. Cross-cultural organizational research is concerned with two basic questions: (1) wh at are the similarities or differences between organizations 10cated in different countries? , and (2) why are they similar or different? Attempting to provide answers to these fundamental questions necessitates the progression through three stages (Child, 1981): (1) the identification of similarities and differences between organizations located in different countires, (2) the isolation of those cultural attributes which account for the observed likenesses and variations, (3) where cross-cultural differences are discovered offer an explanation for the transfer of national cultural to organizations so that they become ' infused with national distinctiveness' (p. 305). The theoretical de bate surrounding the impact of culture on organizations has become polarised around two basic approaches culture free (similarities) and culture bound (differences). Child and Kieser (1979) have summarized the de bate in terms of the following
Approximation Methods for FO-IMC Controllers for Time Delay Systems

Fractional Order Internal Model Control (FO-IMC) is among the newest trends in extending fractional calculus to the integer order control. Approximation of the FO-IMC is one of the key problems. Apart from this, when dealing with time delay systems, the time delay needs also to be approximated. All these approximations can alter the closed loop performance of the controller. In this paper, FO-IMC controllers will be tested in terms of the approximation accuracy. The case study is a first order system with time delay. Several scenarios will be considered, aiming for a conclusion regarding the choice of the approximation method as a function of the process characteristics, closed loop performance and FO-IMC fractional order. To approximate the time delay, two extensively used techniques will be considered, such as the series and Pade approximations. These will be compared to a novel approximation technique. An analysis of the test cases presented show that the series approximation proves more suitable in a single scenario, whereas the novel approximation method produces better results for the rest of the test cases.
SCIENCE CHOICE AT SCHOOL: GENDER AND THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FACTORS STUDENTS CONSIDER WHEN SELECTING SUBJECTS

Science study at school has been linked to the provision of a scientifically capable workforce and a scientifically literate society. Concern has been expressed by educators, academics and policymakers that too few students are choosing post-compulsory science at school. Genderbased preferences for some science subjects has been cited as an important factor affecting choice of science at school. A Best-Worst Scaling survey was used to measure the relative importance of 21 factors that male and female students consider when choosing and rejecting subjects. Results from 333 Year 10 (age 14–17) students suggest that male and female students choose and reject subjects in a similar manner but there are differences in the degree of importance students place on some factors. Girls considered their interest, enjoyment, past ability and type of classwork as being relatively more important than boys did when choosing subjects. Girls considered their past ability and difficulty of a subject as more important than boys did when rejecting subjects. This research indicates that overall girls and boys rank the factors for choosing and rejecting subjects in a similar manner but there are differences in the importance they place on individual factors.
Ethics in the infertility clinic : a qualitative study

This thesis is a qualitative study of infertility clinicians in the UK, exploring how they manage ethical issues: a study that uses empirical methods to explore ethical questions. I use a broadly Aristotelian conception of the relationship between theory and practice to develop a methodology for considering practical ethical issues. I then show how this approach, when allied with contemporary qualitative methodologies, can provide particularly valuable insights and produce practical recommendations. An important element of my approach is that a close attention to actual practice can also result in refining and developing our ethical theories and principles – practice informs theory just as theory can inform practice. This account of the ethical decision-making processes of infertility clinicians can not only highlight new ethical problems, but also develop more nuanced moral norms and ethical theories to deal with the conflicts and issues that arise in the clinical setting. Infertility treatment is a speciality that has attracted much attention from the public and bioethicists. The focus has been predominately on the dramatic aspects such as the status of the embryo or underlying issues such as the ethical boundaries of procreative liberty. Relatively little, however, is known about the everyday moral workings of infertility clinics: how clinicians approach ethical issues on a daily basis; what for them are troubling issues; and how they resolve ethical conflict. This study aims to gain insight into the way clinicians actually make ethical decisions. Moving on from this, it critically evaluates such processes and offers both an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the clinicians’ ethical decision-making and considers how this form of decision-making can be extended and supported in practice. The aims of this thesis are to contribute to the debate on both how ethical decision-making in the infertility clinic can be improved and, more generally, how bioethics can make a useful contribute to practical problems.
Local Anesthesia of the Oral Cavity

Anatomy and Physiology of the Peripheral Nervous System. Pharmacology of Local Anaesthesia. Vascoconstrictors. Clinical Preparations. Patient Evaluation. Anaesthetic Equipment. Neuroanatomy Ofthe Fifth Cranial Nerve. Basic Principles of Injection Technique. Maxillary Anaesthesia. Mandibular Anaesthesia. Supplemental Injection Techniques. Choice of Anaesthetic Technique and Cause of Anaesthetic Failure. Complications and Side Effects. Electronic Dental Analalgesia.
Detecting sub-second activation sequences with sequential fMRI pattern analysis

Mental computations are often reflected in fast changes of neural activation patterns, for instance during so called replay events in the hippocampus. A major challenge for human neuroscience is therefore to capture such fast changes with sufficient spatial resolution using noninvasive neuroimaging. Here, we demonstrate that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a conventional repetition time (TR) of 1.25 s can be used to investigate sequentially activated neural patterns separated by less than 100 ms. We investigated the statistical properties of neural activation patterns following the presentation of fast sequential visual stimuli by extracting multivariate probabilistic estimates for the presence of a neural event over time. The time-course of the probabilistic classifier evidence resembled the expected shape of the hemodynamic response function (HRF). Importantly, by disentangling temporally and spatially overlapping BOLD signals our analysis technique allowed us to detect the order of sequentially activated neural patterns separated by only 64 ms. Providing such enhanced temporal resolution, our method promises to lay the groundwork for investigations into cognitive processes that require extracting temporal information from fast neural event sequences, such as hippocampal replay.
Calpain-10 drives podocyte apoptosis and renal injury in diabetic nephropathy

Background Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a progressive microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), driven largely by podocyte apoptosis. The cysteine protease Calpain 10 is known to augment apoptosis and necrosis, and is a potential therapeutic target in DN. Methods Type 2 diabetes was induced in SD rats by high-fat diet (HFD) feeding and streptozotocin (STZ) injections, and simulated in vitro by culturing conditionally immortalized mouse podocytes in hyperlipidemic (PA, 100 μM) conditions. The rate of apoptosis in the renal tissues and cultured podocytes was determined by TUNEL assay. The expression of Calpain 10 and its biological effects were assayed by real-time PCR, Western blotting, immunoﬂuorescence and electron microscopy. Results Calpain 10 was up-regulated in the kidneys of DN rats, as well as immortalized mouse podocytes. High levels of Calpain 10 was associated with renal dysfunction and tissue destruction, and podocyte injury and apoptosis. Knockdown of Calpain 10 protected podocytes by decreasing apoptosis rate, and upregulated nephrin. Conclusion Calpain 10 is a pro-apoptotic factor in DN, and can be targeted for treating glomerular diseases.
Pedometers may not provide a positive effect on walking activity

Issue addressed: Several national campaigns promote walking and the use of a pedometer to monitor walking activity. It is assumed that wearing a pedometer has a positive effect on walking activity and the likelihood of attaining walking goals. There is no direct research evidence that feedback from pedometers has a positive effect on walking activity. The purpose of this pilot project was to examine the efficacy of feedback from a pedometer as an intervention to increase adherence to a walking program.
Reliability and Validity of the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol for Public Hospitals in Korea

Objectives This study was conducted to assess the applicability of the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) for public hospitals in Korea. Methods In May 2016, 1500 admission claims were collected from Korean public district hospitals using stratified random sampling. Of these claims, 560 admissions to 37 hospitals were retrieved for analysis. Medical records administrators determined the appropriateness of admission using the criteria detailed in the AEP, and a physician separately assessed the appropriateness of admission based on her clinical judgment. To examine the applicability of the AEP, the concordance of the decisions made between a pair of AEP reviewers and between an AEP reviewer and a physician reviewer was compared. Results The results showed an almost perfect inter-rater agreement between the AEP reviewers and a moderate agreement between the AEP reviewers and the physician. The sensitivity and specificity of the AEP were calculated as 0.86 and 0.56, respectively. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the AEP could potentially be applied to Korean public hospitals as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing the appropriateness of admissions.
The challenge to providing stroke care and rehabilitation in Malawi

# Background Much research activity throughout the world has advanced on acute stroke care interventions, however, patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) benefit less from stroke care practices due to continuing challenges. The aim of this study was to systematically explore stroke care provision challenges at the largest referral hospital in Malawi, from the perspectives of service providers, patients with stroke and their caregivers. # Methods A qualitative exploratory study with purposefully-selected participants explored challenges to stroke care from the perspectives of service providers, patients with stroke, and caregivers through focus-group discussions. Semi structured interviews were also conducted with physicians for patients with stroke. Thematic analysis was used to categorize the data. # Results Four key themes emerged: 1) lack of effective implementation of stroke care approaches due to lack of recognition and priority in critical care medicine, limited interprofessional contacts, communication disarray among providers, and lack of follow-up after discharge, particularly from rehabilitation professionals; 2) erratic and insufficient physiotherapy treatment due to limited referrals by physicians, limited visibility of physiotherapists in the hospital, and lack of proper service planning by physiotherapists; 3) Patient-mix challenges from intermingling patients with varying conditions, risking both physical harm and the development of nosocomial infections, and; 4) resource limitations from inadequate qualified service providers, limited medical supplies, unreliable equipment, and lack of warm bedding for patients. # Conclusions This study presented the challenges to stroke care provision, from structural, practice, and resource perspectives. There is a need to put in place context specific, and implementable care protocols to facilitate holistic care for patients with stroke. Economically possible structural needs for instance introduction of stroke-specific care wards in the referral hospitals could improve quality of stroke care services in Malawi.
Rehabilitation of captive Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes Verus)

The behaviour of 48 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) was studied over 27 months in Liberia, West Africa. The chimpanzees were first studied while they were housed in groups in enclosures in a medical research institute, and then after their release onto a 9.7 ha offshore island. When the chimpanzees were observed in captivity, data on social behaviour were collected with the use of check sheets and ad libitum notes. Data were collected on aggression, social grooming, social play, sexual behaviour, and individual spacing. After release onto the island, data on both social and subsistence behaviour were collected with the use of ad libitum notes. Both changes in social behaviour and in the development of subsistence behaviour were observed following release of the chimpanzees onto the island. Rates of aggression decreased following release, whereas rates of social grooming increased. Rates of social play decreased overall, but this was due to a decrease in social play by adults. Stereotyped or abnormal behaviour shown by some subjects declined. Subsistence behaviours which were observed following release were foraging for naturally occurring foods (leaves, fruits, seeds, and nuts), ant-eating, and tool-use for nut-cracking. Some subjects were also seen building sleeping-nests in trees. The chimpanzees also split into subgroups (including consortships) which showed similar trends in size and composition to those observed in wild populations of chimpanzees. Some techniques found to be useful during the release process are discussed, and the study is compared to previous primate release projects.
Effectiveness of filter trading as an intraday trading rule

Purpose Filter trading is a technical trading rule that has been used extensively to test the efficient market hypothesis in the context of long-term trading. In this paper, the authors adopt the rule to analyze intraday trading, in which an open position is not left overnight. This paper aims to explore the relationship between intraday filter trading profitability and intraday realized volatilities. The bivariate thin plate spline (TPS) model is chosen to fit the predictor-response surface for high frequency data from the Hang Seng index futures (HSIF) market. The hypotheses follow the adaptive market hypothesis, arguing that intraday filter trading differs in profitability under different market conditions as measured by realized volatility, and furthermore, the optimal filter size for trading on each day is related to the realized volatility. The empirical results furnish new evidence that range-based realized volatilities (RaV) are more efficient in identifying trading profit than return-based volatilities (ReV). These results shed light on the efficiency of intraday high frequency trading in the HSIF market. Some trading suggestions are given based on the findings. Design/methodology/approach Among all the factors that affect the profit of filter trading, intraday realized volatility stands out as an important predictor. The authors explore several intraday volatilities measures using range-based or return-based methods of estimation. The authors then study how the filter trading profit will depend on realized volatility and how the optimal filter size is related to the realized volatility. The bivariate TPS model is used to model the predictor-response relationship. Findings The empirical results show that range-based realized volatility has a higher predictive power on filter rule trading profit than the return-based realized volatility. Originality/value First, the authors contribute to the literature by investigating the profitability of the filter trading rule on high frequency tick-by-tick data of HSIF market. Second, the authors test the assumption that the magnitude of the intraday momentum trading profit depends on the realized volatilities and aims to identify a relationship between them. Furthermore, the authors consider several intraday realized volatilities and find the RaV have the higher prediction power than ReV. Finally, the authors find some relationship between the optimal filter size and the realized volatilities. Based on the observations, the authors also give some trading suggestions to the intraday filter traders.
Saints and Markets: Activists and the Supply of Credence Goods

This paper contains a theoretical exploration of the potential effects of an information-supplying activist on a market for credence goods. Using a non-cooperative game-theoretic model with incomplete information, we find that such an activist can alter the decisions of firms and consumers and enhance the social welfare of market exchange. We also find that an activist can support equilibria in which firms differentiate their products on some credence characteristic even though this characteristic remains unknown to the consumer both prior and subsequent to consumption. In general, our analysis has several implications for the study of private collective action in markets. Copyright (c) 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
International Bank Lending Channel of Monetary Policy

How does domestic monetary policy in systemic countries spillover to the rest of the world? This paper examines the transmission channel of domestic monetary policy in the cross-border context. We use exogenous shocks to monetary policy in systemically important economies, including the U.S., and local projections to estimate the dynamic effect of monetary policy shocks on bilateral cross-border bank lending. We find robust evidence that an increase in funding costs following an exogenous monetary tightening leads to a statistically and economically significant decline in cross-border bank lending. The effect is weakened during periods of high uncertainty. In contrast, the effect is found to not vary according to the degree of borrower country riskiness, further weakening support for the international portfolio rebalancing channel.