Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Talking to Robots: Learning to Ground Human Language in Perception and Execution

Talking to Robots: Learning to Ground Human Language in Perception and Execution Cynthia Matuszek Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Dieter Fox Computer Science and Engineering Luke Zettlemoyer Computer Science and Engineering Advances in computation, sensing, and hardware are enabling robots to perform an increasing variety of tasks in progressively fewer constraints. It is now possible to imagine robots that can operate in traditionally human-centric environments. However, such robots need the flexibility to take instructions and learn about tasks from nonspecialists using language and other natural modalities. At the same time, physically grounded settings provide exciting opportunities for language learning. This thesis describes work on learning to acquire language for human-robot interaction in a physically grounded space. Two use cases are considered: learning to follow route directions through an indoor map, and learning about object attributes from people using unconstrained language and gesture. These problems are challenging because both language and real-world sensing tend to be noisy and ambiguous. This is addressed by reasoning and learning jointly about language and its physical context, parsing into intermediate formal representations that can be interpreted meaningfully by robotic systems. These systems can learn how to follow natural language directions through a map and how to identify objects from human descriptions, even when the underlying concepts are novel to the system, with success rates comparable to or defining the state of the art. Evaluations show that this work takes important steps towards building a robust, flexible, and effective mechanism for bringing together language acquisition and sensing to learn about the world.
The dimensionality of phonological awareness : An application of item response theory

A battery of 7 tasks composed of 105 items thought to measure phonological awareness skills was administered to 945 children in kindergarten through 2nd grade. Results from confirmatory factor analysis at the task level and modified parallel analysis at the item level indicated that performance on these tasks was well represented by a single latent dimension. A 2-parameter logistic item response (IRT) model was also fit to the performance on the 105 items. Information obtained from the IRT model demonstrated that the tasks varied in the information they provided about a child's phonological awareness skills. These results showed that phonological awareness, as measured by these tasks, appears to be well represented as a unidimensional construct, but the tasks best suited to measure phonological awareness vary across development.
Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension

SUMMARY This article compares several methods of presenting text, including a new paradigm that produces reading-time data with many of the characteristics of naturally occurring eye-fixation data. In the new paradigm, called the moving window condition, a reader presses a button to see each successive word in a text, and the previous word is removed when a new word appears. The words appear in the same position that they would in normal text, and word-length information is available in peripheral vision. The results are qualitatively and quantitatively compared to the results obtained by monitoring the eye fixations of subjects reading normal text. The word-level effects are generally similar. Readers pause longer on longer words, on less frequent words, on words that introduce a new topic, and at ends of sentences. The results suggest that readers initiate the processing of each word as soon as they encounter it rather than buffer words and delay processing. Also considered are two other reading-time paradigms, one in which words are cumulatively displayed on the screen and one in which each successive word is presented at the same location on the screen. Finally, we consider how the tendency to immediately process text might interact with other techniques for text presentation, such as the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) condition, and we generate predictions about the nature and limits of the method. This article examines several alternative approaches to the study of language comprehension and focuses on paradigms that reveal some of the moment-to-moment psychological processes that occur while a person is comprehending a text. These paradigms can provide an account of the time course of comprehension processes. This account, in turn, helps one to select among possible models of comprehension and to make predictions about performance in other paradigms, including rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). In this article, we first present data from three paradigms that allow the reader to control the exposure du
The Influence of Spatial Ability on Gender Differences in Mathematics College Entrance Test Scores across Diverse Samples.

The relationship between mental rotation ability and gender differences in Scholastic Aptitude Test-Math (SAT-M) across diverse samples was investigated. Talented preadolescents, college students, and high- and low-ability college-bound youths, totaling 760, were administered the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test. Gender comparisons showed male outperforming female students in both mental rotation and SAT-M for all 3 high-ability groups but not for the low-ability group. For all female samples, mental rotation predicted math aptitude even when SAT-Verbal was entered first into the regression. For male samples, the relationship varied as a function of sample. When mental rotation ability was statistically adjusted for, the significant gender difference in SAT-M was eliminated for the college sample and the high-ability college-bound students. This suggests that spatial ability may be responsible in part for mediating gender differences in math aptitude among these groups.
Common due date assignment and cumulative deterioration scheduling on a single machine

ABSTRACT This article addresses a single-machine scheduling and common due date assignment problem in which the actual processing time of a job is a linear increasing function of the total basic processing times of already processed jobs. The aim is to determine simultaneously the common due date and job schedule that will minimize a cost penalty function including the due date assignment cost, total earliness penalties and a weighted number of tardy jobs. The problem is shown to be -hard even if there is no earliness penalty. Moreover, a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm and a fully polynomial time approximation scheme are proposed to solve the problem. An time algorithm is designed to solve the special case when all jobs have identical tardiness penalties.
Distributed Viewshed Analysis An Evaluation of Distribution Frameworks for Geospatial Information Systems

Viewshed analysis is the process of computing what areas of a terrain are visible from a certain observation point. In this thesis we evaluated the performance of these computations on cloud clusters using the distribution framework Apache Spark. We implemented three commonly used viewshed algorithms; R3 which is slow but highly accurate as well as R2 and van Kreveld which are faster but less accurate. Two versions of each algorithm were implemented, one to run on a single multi-core machine and one to run on a server cluster using Spark. We compared the accuracy and running time of the different algorithms in order to determine when to use the different algorithms. Our results show that viewshed analysis does not perform well when implemented using Spark if real-time results are required. In fact the faster algorithms performed consistently worse on the cluster, even for very large input data. For the highly accurate, but slow, R3 algorithm we were able to achieve a 1.6x speedup using the distribution framework.
Effects of reflection, restatement, probe, and nonverbal behaviors on client affect.

The effects of counselor verbal behavior (reflections, probes, and restatements) and counselor nonverbal behavior (presence or absence of nodding and smiling) were examined. The sample of 24 male and 24 female subjects were randomly assigned to one of the six treatments. Each subject participated in a half-hour counseling session, which was divided into four time periods (baseline, counselor intervention, baseline, and counselor intervention). Probes resulted in more discussion of feelings than did either reflections or restatements. Nonverbal behavior did not affect discussion of feelings.
A Scheme for Online Short-term Operational Reliability Evaluation

The short-term reliability of a power system in the real-time operating state based on EMS/WAMS (energy management system/wide-area measurement system) is studied. The evaluation scheme for online short-term operational reliability including indices, algorithm and application frame is proposed. The key techniques used in the scheme are described. The real-time component models are established to evaluate the system reliability in the current operating state. The time-dependent state probability of a component is adopted to study the short-term reliability of power system. The fast sorting technique is applied to system state selection to balance evaluation accuracy and speed, realizing online evaluation. The selected system states are analyzed based on the system operating conditions during forecasting. The feasibility and validity of the evaluation scheme proposed are proved by application to the IEEE-RTS.
A Binary-tree Searching Anti-collision Algorithm Based on Pruning Away Branches and Its Practice

Tag collision is a common problem in RFID. There are several anti-collision algorithms to solve this problem, such as ALOHA, SlottedALOHA and so on. But, they are often low-efficient when processing a lot of tags at the same time. In the reader's processing area, these are a lot ofidle nodes in the binary-tree that are composed of a limited number of tags' EPC. If the reader ignores them when searching, all tags can be identifiedwith high efficiency. This algorithm can be put into practice based on the pre-order traversing idea of threaded tree. Finally, algorithm simulationindicates that its efficiency is stabilized at 46.22% when processing large numbers of tags.
Privacy-Aware Data Aggregation in Mobile Sensing with Fault Tolerance

Over the years capability of the mobile sensing devices like smart phones are increased in terms of capturing and sharing the information. This information can be useful if analysed as an aggregated value or values. Classic examples are like traffic trend in particular area, medical information in particular locality etc. When such information is shared to an aggregator, user's identity should be compromised and only information needs to be shared. To achieve this user's identity Li, Cao and Porta (1) has suggested efficient protocol to obtain sum aggregate value using homomorphic encryption and novel key management. Unfortunately, the use of cryptography in the projected protocol scheme introduced the all-or-nothing decryption model. Therefore, the aggregator learns nothing if a single user fails. In some of the critical applications, data has to be collected from all users to get right results. Any leakage in data will lead to incorrect aggression and sub-sequent calculations. Fault tolerance has to be handled to get right results. T. -H.H. Chan, E. Shi, and D. Song (4) have proposed a technique to handle fault tolerance. In proposed technique, a binary interval tree over n users, and allow the aggregator to estimate the sum of contiguous intervals of users as represented by nodes in the interval tree. The binary-tree technique allows handling user failures joins and leaves, with a small logarithmic (or polylog) cost in terms of communication and estimation error.
Sexual Assault History and Health Perceptions: Seven General Population Studies

This article uses data from seven population surveys to evaluate the association of sexual assault history with health perceptions. It estimates the extent of generalizability across gender ethnic groups and studies; the extent to which depression accounts for or mediates the association; and whether some circumstances of assault are more strongly related to poor subjective health. Data from each of 18 subsamples of the surveys were analyzed (pooled N = 10001; 7550 women and 2451 men) and results were combined by using meta-analysis. Assault was associated with poor subjective health (odds ratio [OR] = 1.63 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.36 1.95) and this result was consistent regardless of gender ethnicity or sample. Controlling depression did not markedly change this result (OR = 1.46 95% CI = 1.21 1.77) indicating that depression did not account for or mediate the assault-health perceptions association. Multiple assaults and assaults by strangers or spouse were most strongly associated with poor subjective health. (authors)
Association of transcription factor WRKY56 gene from Populus simonii × P. nigra with salt tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

The WRKY transcription factor family is one of the largest groups of transcription factor in plants, playing important roles in growth, development, and biotic and abiotic stress responses. Many WRKY genes have been cloned from a variety of plant species and their functions have been analyzed. However, the studies on WRKY transcription factors in tree species under abiotic stress are still not well characterized. To understand the effects of the WRKY gene in response to abiotic stress, mRNA abundances of 102 WRKY genes in Populus simonii × P. nigra were identified by RNA sequencing under normal and salt stress conditions. The expression of 23 WRKY genes varied remarkably, in a tissue-specific manner, under salt stress. Since the WRKY56 was one of the genes significantly induced by NaCl treatment, its cDNA fragment containing an open reading frame from P. simonii × P. nigra was then cloned and transferred into Arabidopsis using the floral dip method. Under salt stress, the transgenic Arabidopsis over-expressed the WRKY56 gene, showing an increase in fresh weight, germination rate, proline content, and peroxidase and superoxide dismutase activity, when compared with the wild type. In contrast, transgenic Arabidopsis displayed a decrease in malondialdehyde content under salt stress. Overall, these results indicated that the WRKY56 gene played an important role in regulating salt tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis.
Multiple human tracking with dual cost graphs

Visual tracking gives a trajectory of a person’s movement in a video. It is an important element of human’s behavior analysis. However, the performance of the most visual tracking methods does not satisfy precision and speed for use in the real world. High accuracy and low computation complexity are demanded but these two have a relation of trade-off. Therefore, we aim to propose a tracking method that balances accuracy and computational complexity. In this paper, we proposed a method named Dual Cost Graph (DCG)-Tracker using the graphs referred to as a clique graph and a flow network. We evaluated DCG-Tracker with PNNL parking lot 1 dataset1, 2 and showed that it balances between accuracy and speed.
Rhythmic typology and variation in first and second languages

This paper explores the concept of linguistic rhythm classes through a series of studies exploiting metrics designed to quantify speech rhythm. We compared the rhythm of ‘syllable-timed’ French and Spanish with that of ‘stress-timed’ Dutch and English, finding that rate-normalised metrics of vocalic interval variability (VarcoV and nPVI-V), together with a measure of the balance of vocalic and intervocalic intervals (%V), were the most discriminant between the two rhythm groups. The same metrics were also informative about the adaptation of speakers to rhythmically-similar (Dutch and English) or rhythmically-distinct (Spanish and English) second languages, and showed evidence of rhythmic gradience within accents of British English. Patterns of scores in all studies support the notion that rhythmic typology is not strictly categorical. A perceptual study found VarcoV to be the strongest predictor of the rating of a second language speaker’s accent as native or non-native.
Comparative Analysis of Ginsenoside Profiles: Antioxidant, Antiproliferative, and Antigenotoxic Activities of Ginseng Extracts of Fine and Main Roots

The aim of this study was to compare ginsenosides profiles, and antioxidant, antiproliferative, and antigenotoxic activities of ginseng extract derived from fine and main roots. The result of the analysis showed a higher total content of ginsenoside in fine roots than in main roots; differences in levels between the different extracts were also confirmed. The oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assay showed that H2O main root extract had a significantly higher activity than that from fine roots. MeOH and H2O extracts from the fine and main roots also exhibited stronger cellular antioxidant capacity 2,2’-azobis(2-amidinopropane) dihydrochloride-induced oxidative stress in HepG2 cells compared with the positive control. Through calculating the half-maximal inhibitory concentration values, the cytotoxicity of the main root extracts were ranked as follows: MeOH (6.1±1.2 μg/mL)> H2O (6.6±0.1 μg/mL)> ethanol (10.4±0.6 μg/mL); however, the cytotoxicity of all fine root extracts did not significantly differ. All the fine root extracts showed an inhibitory capacity against 4-hydroxynonenal-induced DNA damage, however only the MeOH extract of the main root showed a decrease in DNA damage. All three solvent extracts from the fine roots reduced DNA damage more in the H2O2-treated group, whereas only the MeOH and H2O extracts of the main roots produced a significant reduction. Levels of Rg3 ginsenoside were positively correlated with indices of the ORAC value, and total ginsenoside contents showed a negative correlation with DNA damage induced by H2O2. This study suggests that ginseng and the extraction solvent both affect levels of ginsenoside. Furthermore, the antioxidant potency of ginseng can be attributed to the content of some ginsenosides.
A highly diverse fungal community associated with leaves of the mangrove plant Acanthus ilicifolius var. xiamenensis revealed by isolation and metabarcoding analyses

A high diversity of culturable foliar endophytic fungi is known from various mangrove plants, and the core taxa include species from Colletotrichum, Pestalotiopsis, Phoma, Phomopsis, Sporomiella, among others. Since a small fraction of fungi is able to grow in culture, this study investigated the diversity of fungi associated with leaves of Acanthus ilicifolius var. xiamenensis using both isolation and metabarcoding approaches. A total of 203 isolates were cultured from surface-sterilized leaves, representing 47 different fungal species: 30 species from the winter samples (104 isolates), and 26 species from the summer samples (99 isolates). Ascomycota was dominant in both types of leaf samples, while Basidiomycota was isolated only from the summer samples. Drechslera dematioidea (10.58%, percentage of occurrence), Colletotrichum sp. 3 (7.69%) and Alternaria sp. (7.69%) were dominant in the winter samples; Fusarium oxysporum (13.13%), Diaporthe endophytica (10.10%) and Colletotrichum sp. 1 (9.09%) in the summer samples. Overall, Corynespora cassiicola (6.90%), F. oxysporum (6.40%) and Guignardia sp. (6.40%) had the highest overall percentage of occurrence. In the metabarcoding analysis, a total of 111 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were identified from 17 leaf samples: 96 OTUs from the winter and 70 OTUs from the summer samples. Sequences belonging to Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were detected in both samples but the former phylum was dominant over the latter. Based on read abundance, taxa having the highest percentage of occurrence included Alternaria sp. (3.46%), Cladosporium delicatulum (2.56%) and Pyrenochaetopsis leptospora (1.41%) in the winter leaves, and Aureobasidium sp. (10.72%), Cladosporium sp. (7.90%), C. delicatulum (3.45%) and Hortaea werneckii (3.21%) in the summer leaves. These latter four species also had the highest overall percentage of occurrence. Combining the results from both methods, a high diversity of fungi (at least 110 species) was found associated with leaves of A. ilicifolius var. xiamenensis. Many of the fungi identified were plant pathogens and may eventually cause diseases in the host.
Relationship problems in the early stages of marriage: A longitudinal investigation.

The two objectives of this study were to (a) provide descriptive information on couples' relationship problems at three stages of family development and (b) study the nature of couples' progress through these stages by using relationship problems as exemplars of changes in developmental tasks. With respect to the first objective, consistent patterns were found among three methods of assessing couples' problems. Subsequent analyses on problem intensity ratings indicated a moderately strong association between male and female ratings of most problem areas and between overall problem intensity and relationship satisfaction at each stage of family development. With respect to the second objective, changes in clusters of problems were found between stages consistent with some changes in developmental tasks predicted by stage theories of family development. Support was also found for the assumption that men and women confront developmental tasks at different rates. Implications for therapy and preventative interventions with couples and recommendations for future research are discussed. Every marriage faces the virtual certainty of some types of relationship problems. These problems may reflect areas of mutual stress or emotionally charged conflicts between partners, but some form of problems are an almost inevitable and potentially divisive feature in any marriage. Each year over one million marriages end in divorce (National Center for Health Statistics, 1990), in large part, because partners fail to resolve their problems. Other marriages manage to survive but remain distressed because problems are not dealt with constructively. The inability of marital partners to cope with their problems has been viewed as one of the most powerful factors contributing Preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health grant
A novel feature selection approach based on multiple filters and new separable degree index for credit scoring

With the rapid development of Internet finance, credit scoring has played a significant role in peer to peer lending platforms. However, the massive and high-dimensional characteristics of the credit data make it difficult to directly build the credit scoring model. Therefore, the feature selection is attracting more and more attention, which can be used for processing the complicated credit data. In this paper, we proposed a novel feature selection approach, which is specifically designed for analyzing the customer data in credit scoring. Firstly, we proposed a strategy that combining multiple filters to select the different candidate feature subsets from customer data. Then, a New Separable Degree index is proposed, which can select the optimal feature subset for credit scoring. Experimental results indicated that the performance of the approach we proposed is superior to other single filters, and the computational cost is greatly reduced compared to the traditional wrappers.