Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Similarity Learning and Generalization with Limited Data: A Reservoir Computing Approach

We investigate the ways in which a machine learning architecture known as Reservoir Computing learns concepts such as “similar” and “different” and other relationships between image pairs and generalizes these concepts to previously unseen classes of data. We present two Reservoir Computing architectures, which loosely resemble neural dynamics, and show that a Reservoir Computer (RC) trained to identify relationships between image pairs drawn from a subset of training classes generalizes the learned relationships to substantially different classes unseen during training. We demonstrate our results on the simple MNIST handwritten digit database as well as a database of depth maps of visual scenes in videos taken from a moving camera. We consider image pair relationships such as images from the same class; images from the same class with one image superposed with noise, rotated 90°, blurred, or scaled; images from different classes. We observe that the reservoir acts as a nonlinear filter projecting the input into a higher dimensional space in which the relationships are separable; i.e., the reservoir system state trajectories display different dynamical patterns that reflect the corresponding input pair relationships. Thus, as opposed to training in the entire high-dimensional reservoir space, the RC only needs to learns characteristic features of these dynamical patterns, allowing it to perform well with very few training examples compared with conventional machine learning feed-forward techniques such as deep learning. In generalization tasks, we observe that RCs perform significantly better than state-of-the-art, feed-forward, pair-based architectures such as convolutional and deep Siamese Neural Networks (SNNs). We also show that RCs can not only generalize relationships, but also generalize combinations of relationships, providing robust and effective image pair classification. Our work helps bridge the gap between explainable machine learning with small datasets and biologically inspired analogy-based learning, pointing to new directions in the investigation of learning processes.
Macroeconomic Prospects for China's Outward FDI

Abstract We present evidence from panel data on overseas foreign direct investment (OFDI) by Chinese firms in 103 countries during 2003–2007. The data suggest that Chinese imports, unlike Chinese exports, stimulate investment in the country of origin. This article supports the theory that Chinese investment abroad is horizontal and designed to serve the Chinese local market (import platform investment). Estimates suggest that a 1% change in imports from China will lead to a 0.15% change in Chinese OFDI. We also find that an appreciation of the Chinese exchange rate will have a strong influence on firm entry decisions.
The Relationship between Democracy and Economic Growth in Tunisia: An Application of Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model

This paper aims to identify the nature of the relationship between democracy and economic growth. We will answer the question: Does democracy improve economic growth? We study the case of Tunisia during the period from 1980 until 2014; this country has experienced a democratic transition after the revolution of 14 th January 2011. Our study is divided into two parts. The first part is a literature review of overview on the causality between democracy and economic growth. The second part as an application uses the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL). The choice of the technical SARL aimed the study of the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between two variables in level, a procedure co-integration has been proposed by Pesaran et al (2001). The results of different empirical studies were inconclusive. Some generated a negative impact of democracy on growth while others showed the opposite. The empirical results of our work have shown that in a nascent democracy such is the case of Tunisia; democracy has no effect on economic growth in the short term. It is to add an observation rate of GDP during the period post -revolution generated a sawtooth trend which demonstrates the unstable economic situation in the country.
Psychological Well-Being in Awaiting-Trial Inmates: The Roles of Loneliness and Social Support

This research examined the roles of loneliness and social support as predictors of psychological well-being in awaiting-trial inmates. Participants were 300 awaiting-trial inmates of Enugu Prison Command. There were 200 (73.33%) male inmates and 80 (26.66%) female inmates in the sample. Their ages ranged between 18 years and 69 years (Mean age = 43.50 years; Standard Deviation = 5.21). Purposive sampling method was adopted in the sample selection; and participation in the study was anonymous. Three instruments – the short-form University of California, Los Angeles loneliness scale (ULS-8), the multidimensional scale of perceived social support (MSPSS), and the psychological well-being scale (PWB-S), were used for data collection. Analysis of data was conducted with multiple regressions and correlations (MRC). Results showed that loneliness and social support were significant predictors of psychological well-being. The findings failed to confirm the first hypothesis, but confirmed the second hypothesis. Discussion highlighted the need to establish vocational training facilities and other social services in prisons to constructively engage prison inmates in meaningful tasks.
Influence of a Single Swim Training on the Scapular Position and Isometric Muscle Strength in Young Swimmers

The purpose of our study was to investigate the influence of a single swim training on isometric scapular muscle strength and the static position of the scapula in a sample of 30 healthy adolescent swimmers who were measured on two sessions at a local aquatic center. Fatigue as result of a single swim training session may influence scapular position and strength. Measures included isometric evaluation of serratus anterior and upper trapezius peak isometric force using a push and shrug procedure, serratus anterior to upper trapezius strength ratios, and a semidynamic evaluation of lateral scapular displacement employing the Kibler method. When tested using a repeated-measures ANOVA, none of the strength parameters changed significantly as a result of the single swim training. Adolescent swimmers did employ higher values for the serratus anterior than for the upper trapezius. In the three positions of the LSST, the lateral displacement of the scapula increased significantly after the training (p = 0.001, p < .001, p < .001) and a minor scapular asymmetry was found. (p = 0.037, p = 0.011, p = 0.005). The highest LSST values were present on the dominant side, at both test moments.
Upregulation of GLE 1 and LCP 2 Genes in H 5 N 1 Influenza Virus Infected Patients

Previous study showed that the Gle1 RNA export mediator-like (Gle1l) gene and the lymphocyte cytosolic protein 2 (Lcp2) gene were upregulated in response to influenza virus A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 (H1N1) in a mouse mode. To determine whether these two genes were upregulated in humans after influenza A virus infection, nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from eleven patients with flu-like symptoms for viral RNA extraction and PCR amplification. Sequencing analysis revealed that nucleoprotein (NP) gene fragments amplified from nasopharyngeal swabs of four patients shared the highest similarity with the NP gene from avian influenza A (H5N1) virus (A/ goose/Shantou/753/2002). Peripheral blood samples were then collected from four patients for quantitative analysis of GLE1 and LCP2 gene expression. Our results demonstrated that both GLE1 and LCP2 genes were upregulated in H5N1 influenza A virus infected patients, suggesting that upregulation of GLE1 and LCP2 genes may be important for the host defense against influenza A viruses.
Effect of high night temperatures during anthesis on cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) pistil and leaf physiology and biochemistry

Flowering in cotton is a sensitive stage to heat stress but the effects of high night temperatures on cotton's pistil metabolism are not well understood. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of high night temperatures on the carbohydrate, glutathione reductase and free polyamine content of the cotton pistil and its subtending leaf. Growth chamber experiments were conducted using cotton ('Gossypium hirsutum' L.) cultivar ST5288B2F. Treatments consisted of normal day/night (32/24 degreesC) and high night temperatures (32/30 degreesC) for two weeks at flowering. Pistil glucose and sucrose concentrations were significantly increased under conditions of high night temperatures and the same pattern was observed for starch concentrations. However, even though leaf respiration increased, only heat-stressed leaf starch levels were significantly lower compared to the control. In contrast, leaf glutathione reductase was significantly increased under high night temperatures while pistil glutathione reductase remained similar under both control and stress conditions. High night temperatures significantly increased leaf and pistil putrescine content, but had no effect on leaf and pistil spermidine content. Spermine content was significantly increased in the pistil but not in the leaf. In conclusion, leaf antioxidant metabolism appeared to be more efficient in protecting leaf carbohydrate metabolism under high night temperatures since reductions were observed only in leaf starch levels. Contrary to that, pistil antioxidant mechanism appeared less sensitive to the high night temperature stress and despite increases in pistil polyamine content accumulation of glucose, sucrose and starch concentrations was observed indicating a perturbation in carbohydrate metabolism.
Capital Market Performance of Social Responsibility Investing (SRI) Firms

As corporate social responsibility (CSR) becomes increasingly emphasized recently, sociallyresponsible investing (SRI) funds have attracted capital market participants’ interests. The study examines the capital market performance of the firms whose stocks are selected into the SRI funds. An SRI fund is the one that screens the companies whose stock investors buy on a list of socially-responsible criteria. So, the firms whose stocks are included in SRI fund (i.e., SRI firms) are meant to carry out well their social responsibility. While CSR activities are socially desirable, the study examines whether CSR firms perform well in capital market as they may convey good corporate image to their present and potential customers and capital investors. The study empirically tested the hypothesis with the capital make performance measure of Tobin’s Q, based on a sample of 1,994 year-firms whose stocks were included into SRI funds during the period from 2007 to 2010 in Korea (SRI funds were launched to market mainly from year 2007 in Korea). The study found that SRI fund firms performed better in the capital market (Korea Securities Market).
Improved CT-based voxel phantom generation for MCNP Monte Carlo (The 12th International Conference on Radiation Shielding (ICRS-12) and the 17th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division of ANS (RPSD-2012)) -- (Workshop on Computational Medical Physics)

A graphic user interface has been developed to perform the basic and advanced functions required to create CT-based, voxelized patent models for MCNP and MCNPX Monte Carlo simulations. Additional flexibility is enabled in selective tally definition, lattice structure limits, and conversion of CT number to materials. Setting lattice structure limits can reduce or obviate the need for excessive sub-sampling and improve efficiency while preserving model resolution. The patient model, tally definition, and subsequent simulation output are all incorporated in a post-processing routine that enables comparative analysis between calculated and measured datasets. Judicious application of these developments can greatly decrease the time required to achieve a given uncertainty while preserving model detail; use of these tools typically results in reduction of simulation times by over 60%.
The social relevance and the socio-cultural origins of gender differences in spatial abilities

All over the world girls are still highly underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects in school, and only a small percentage of women choose occupational careers in that field. The socially-influenced gender differences in spatial abilities – particularly in the ability to rotate twoor three-dimensional objects in one’s mind – are considered as a cognitive mediator of that gender gap. This paper gives an overview of the social causes and social consequences of the gender differences in spatial abilities. It focuses on sociocultural influences, including gender stereotypes (e.g. the phenomenon of the “stereotype threat”), and the importance of role models in family and school. Furthermore, personal factors like the ability-related self-concept and the effects of experience and training are taken into consideration. The results of empirical studies are reported which reveal that mental-rotation performance is strongly influenced by gender-specific differences in spatial experiences, role models, the ability-related selfconcept and socio-economic status. Finally, the paper discusses why and how women`s perceived lack of spatial abilities might lead to gender-typical educational and occupational choices.
A Hybrid Intelligent Multisensor Positioning Methodology for Reliable Vehicle Navigation

With the rapid development of intelligent transportation systems worldwide, it becomes more important to realize accurate and reliable vehicle positioning in various environments whether GPS is available or not. This paper proposes a hybrid intelligent multisensor positioning methodology fusing the information from low-cost sensors including GPS, MEMS-based strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) and electronic compass, and velocity constraint, which can achieve a significant performance improvement over the integration scheme only including GPS and MEMS-based SINS. First, the filter model of SINS aided by multiple sensors is presented in detail and then an improved Kalman filter with sequential measurement-update processing is developed to realize the filtering fusion. Further, a least square support vector machine- (LS SVM-) based intelligent module is designed and augmented with the improved KF to constitute the hybrid positioning system. In case of GPS outages, the LS SVM-based intelligent module trained recently is used to predict the position error to achieve more accurate positioning performance. Finally, the proposed hybrid positioning method is evaluated and compared with traditional methods through real field test data. The experimental results validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.
The effectiveness of a brief mobile phone-based mindfulness intervention: effects on stress, emotion regulation and life satisfaction in teachers

Research has frequently identified teaching as one of the most stressful of occupations, often due to high job demands and busy work schedules. With such detrimental effects to well-being caused by negative stress, intervention is essential. Mindfulness has offered promising results for stress reduction, however the duration of typical mindfulness interventions is impractical to most. The present study explored the effectiveness of a brief mobile phone-based mindfulness intervention. Thirty-nine secondary school teachers were randomly allocated to either a mindfulness group (n = 22) or active control group (n = 17) to establish the effectiveness of an atypical mindfulness intervention in increasing trait mindfulness, reducing stress, reducing difficulties in emotion regulation and improving life satisfaction over a ten-day period. The mindfulness group experienced significant increases in self-reported trait mindfulness and declines in stress and emotion regulatory difficulties. Self-reported life satisfaction failed to significantly increase from pre to post intervention. Non-significant changes were observed for all the tested variables in the control group. The present study contributes to the limited research of mobile phone- based interventions whilst addressing implications and directions for future research.
. A pre-FFT equalizer design for application to Hiperlan/2. 1690 - 1697.

Use of a pre-FFT Equaliser (PFE) has been previously proposed as a method for either improving the eflciency of OFDM radio modems or increasing the excess delay spread that they are capable of operating under. In this paper, application of the PFE to the Hiperlad standard is considered. Key features of the physical layer specijication of the Hiperlad? standard are summarised and those aspects that are particularly relevant when considering the use of the PFE are highlighted. A Hiperlad? compatible OFDM receiver incorporating the PFE, known as a combined OFDM-equalisation receiver, is then described. In order to evaluate the relative performance of the conventional OFDM and combined OFDM-equalisation receivers, a Hiperlad2 compliant sofcware simulation of the two receivers is undertaken. The results are used to compare the two systems in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Packet Error Rate (PER) versus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and also in terms of transmission eficiency. It is shown that the combined OFDM-equalisation receiver is capable of achieving near identical performance to the conventional OFDW receiver in terms of bit error rates, but is further capable of achieving a 9% eflciency improvement. This equates to a potential increase of up to 6Mbitsh in the supported ahta rate. The application of the PFE to improve BER and PER performance under severe delay spread conditions is also discussed.
Making science cooler: Carré's apparatus

The need of refrigeration in the laboratory is not a new idea, and this paper intends to make a tour through its history in the 19th century, where one of the first attempts to make things cooler was created by the Carre brothers. The aim is to explore the types of Carre Apparatus and the techniques used in it, and to study their evolution and improvement. This work will focus mostly in the instrument’s collection of the Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon, which owns several exemplars of the Carre Apparatus as well as improved versions of it. Our approach tries to put these objects back in their real place in the 19th century lab work, corroborating equipment with archival sources by establishing links between equipment and photographs, reports, curricula, chemistry compendia, textbooks written by the professors, where certain experimental settings are described and depicted, invoices and other administration papers, e.g. the 1854 inventory, among other archival and bibliographical sources. The 19th century ‘Laboratorio Chimico’ of the Polytechnic School (1837-1911), integrated in the Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon suffered a restoration and a musealization work (1998-2007) as well as a part of the museum’s heritage, where a Ferdinand Carre’s apparatus is included. This historical space and the pertaining collection allows us to go back to the 19th century scientific practice at the Lisbon Polytechnic School and breathe its atmosphere in a golden period
Mechanical Strength and Structural Basis of β2 Integrin to Mediate Neutrophil Accumulation on Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial Cells: A Study Using Atomic Force Microscopy and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Neutrophil (PMN) accumulation on liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) is crucial to pathogen clearance and tissue damage in the liver sinusoids and controlled by a series of adhesion molecules expressed on the surface of PMNs and LSECs. The role of lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1 (LFA-1) and macrophage-1 antigen (Mac-1) in this process is still contentious. Here we compared the dynamic force spectra of the binding of β2 integrin to intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) on LSECs using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and performed free and steered molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to analyze their structural bases of LFA-1or Mac-1-I-domain and ICAM-1-D1 or D3 pair in their force spectra. Our AFM data suggest that the mechanical strength of LFA-1-ICAM-1 bond is significantly stronger than that of Mac-1-ICAM-1 bond, implying a dominate role for LFA-1 to mediate PMN adhesion under shear flow. MD simulations indicated that spontaneous dissociation of Mac-1-I-domain vs. ICAMD3-domain is slower with the stronger interaction energy than that for LFA-1 I-domain vs. ICAM-D1-domain and that the rupture force for Mac-1 is lower than that for LFA-1, which are in qualitative agreement with the above experimental observations. These data indicate that the biomechanical features of LFA-1 and Mac-1 to mediate PMN adhesion on LSECs in vitro are similar with those in other tissues like cerebrovascular endothelium, while Mac-1-mediated PMN recruitment in liver sinusoids may stem from the slow blood flow in vivo. These findings further the understandings of PMN recruitment under shear flow in liver sinusoids.
Effectiveness of the Botanical Insecticide Azadirachtin Against Tirathaba rufivena (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

Abstract Tirathaba rufivena Walker (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) is an important pest of areca palm, Areca catechu L. (Arecaceae), in China. The effects of azadirachtin on the development and mortality of T. rufivena were determined. All larval instars were susceptible to azadirachtin, but the stomach and contact toxicities diminished as the larvae matured. The LC25 and LC50 dosages had no effect on larval hatch when applied directly to the eggs on different days after deposition, but the LC90 treatment retarded hatch from eggs treated 1 to 3 d after deposition. The tested concentrations significantly affected the survival of neonate larvae from treated eggs, especially larvae that emerged from eggs treated 3 d after deposition. Azadirachtin also prolonged larval development and duration of the pupal stage. The percentage of adult emergence decreased, and longevity of the emerged adults was shortened, following treatment. Also, egg production and viability from females treated as larvae with azadirachtin were significantly affected.
Mining the Shirt Sizes for Indian Men by Clustered Classification

In garment production engineering, sizing system plays an important role for manufacturing of clothing. The standards for defining the size label are a critical issue. Locating the right garment size for a customer depends on the label as an interface. In this research work intend to approach that it could be used for developing sizing systems by data mining techniques applied to Indian anthropometric dataset. We propose a new approach of two-stage data mining procedure for labelling the shirt types exclusively for Indian men. In the first stage , clustering technique applied on the original dataset, to categorise the size labels. Then these clusters are used for supervised learning in the second stage for classification. A sizing system classifies a specific population into homogeneous subgroups based on some key body dimensions. The space with these dimensions gives raise to complexity for finding uniform standards. This enables us to have an interface as a communication tool among manufacturers, retailers and consumers. This sizing system is developed for the men"s age ranges between 25 and 66 years. Main attribute happens to be the chest size as clearly visible in the data set. We have obtained classifications for men"s shirt attributes based on clustering techniques.