Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Strategy for Resetting a Non-stationary Markov Chain during Learning via Joint Stochastic Approximation

A standard approach for learning a deep generative model is to adopt the principle of maximum likelihood, where we attempt to find the model parameters that maximize the probability of the observed data, also called model evidence. Unfortunately, model evidence and its gradient are difficult to compute precisely for most deep generative models. Overcoming this difficulty has been the topic of active research in the ML and statistics communities, which resulted in techniques for optimizing computationally-tractable lower or upper bounds of model evidence (Ranganath et al., 2014; Kingma and Welling, 2014; Burda et al., 2016), as well as techniques for optimizing model evidence directly using sample-based estimates of its gradient (Bornschein and Bengio, 2015; Ou and Song, 2020). Our goal is to make further progress in the second group of techniques, which are less explored than the ones in the first but are known to work well with discrete latent variables. In this paper, we report our preliminary results based on the recent work by Ou and Song (2020). Instead of following the traditional approach of approximating the gradient of model evidence using importance sampling (IS), Ou and Song (2020) proposed to use Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for the gradient estimation. Their algorithm employs a non-stationary Markov chain that approximately generates samples for a moving target distribution, namely, the posterior of the model that changes throughout the gradient-based optimization. Since MCMC is known to perform better than IS for high-dimensional models, the algorithm is expected to work better for high-dimensional deep generative model than IS-based alternatives. In fact, the experiments in Ou and Song (2020) show improvement over the Reweighted-Wake-Sleep algorithm (RWS) (Bornschein and Bengio, 2015) (the best known among the IS-alternatives) for training deep generative models with discrete latent variables, such as Helmholtz Machine (Dayan et al., 1995). We focus on one particular yet important problem of Ou and Song (2020)’s algorithm, which we call non-stationary kernel problem. Intuitively, the problem asks for an effective strategy to decide when we should reset a Markov chain used in the algorithm. The transition kernel of this chain is not fixed, because its target distribution keeps getting updated via the gradient ascent. The algorithm thus has to decide if the sample of the chain for the model before the gradient-ascent step should be used to generate a sample after the step, or if it should be discarded and the next sample should be generated from scratch. Although getting this decision right is crucial to get good results, Ou and Song (2020) do not provide an algorithmic solution for it; in their experiments, they used an ad-hoc strategy of always resetting the chain (i.e., generating the next sample from scratch) up until a fixed number of gradient-update steps, after which running the chain without interruption.
Social Hedonic Editing: People Prefer to Experience Events at the Same Time as Others

Previous research testing the hedonic editing hypothesis examined preferences for the timing of events that happen to the self—asking, for example, whether people prefer to experience two positive or two negative events on the same or different day(s). Here, we examine preferences for the timing of events that happen to the self and to others—social hedonic editing. Across five studies (N = 2,522), we find people prefer to experience a positive or negative event on the same day that (vs. a different day than) another person experiences a similar positive or negative event. Studies 1 and 2 document this “preference for integration” in interpersonal (i.e., for the self and others) but not intrapersonal (i.e., for the self) contexts, Studies 3 and 4 suggest people prefer integration because it increases interpersonal connection, and Study 5 highlights a boundary condition. People do not prefer integration for very emotionally impactful events.
OP-ICBJ200039 1..12

Synopsis Two hypotheses have been proposed for the evolution of structures that reduce flight sounds in birds. According to the stealth hypothesis, flying quietly reduces the ability of other animals (e.g., prey) to detect the animal’s approach from its flight sounds. This hypothesis predicts that animals hunting prey with acute hearing evolve silencing features. The self-masking hypothesis posits that reduced flight sounds permit the animal itself to hear better (such as the sounds of its prey, or its own echolocation calls) during flight. This hypothesis predicts that quieting features evolve in predators that hunt by ear, or in species that echolocate. Owls, certain hawks, and nightbirds (nocturnal Caprimulgiformes) have convergently evolved a sound-reducing feature: a velvety coating on the dorsal surface of wing and tail feathers. Here we document a fourth independent origin of the velvet, in the American kestrel (Falco sparverius). Among these four clades (hawks, falcons, nightbirds, and owls), the velvet is longer and better developed in wing and tail regions prone to rubbing with neighboring feathers, apparently to reduce broadband frictional noise produced by rubbing of adjacent feathers. We tested whether stealth or self-masking better predicted which species evolved the velvet. There was no support of echolocation as a driver of the velvet: oilbird(Steatornis caripensis) and glossy swiftlet (Collocalia esculenta) each evolved echolocation but neither had any velvet. A phylogenetic least squares fit of stealth and self-masking (to better hear prey sounds) provided support for both hypotheses. Some nightbirds (nightjars, potoos, and owlet-nightjars) eat flying insects that do not make much sound, implying the velvet permits stealthy approach of flying insects. One nightbird clade, frogmouths (Podargus) have more extensive velvet than other nightbirds and may hunt terrestrial prey by ear, in support of self-masking. In hawks, the velvet is also best developed in species known or suspected to hunt by ear (harriers and kites), supporting the self-masking hypothesis, but velvet is also present in reduced form in hawk species not known to hunt by ear, in support of the stealth hypothesis. American kestrel is not known to hunt by ear, and unlike the other falcons sampled, flies slowly (kite-like) when hunting. Thus the presence of velvet in it supports the stealth hypothesis. All owls sampled (n1⁄4 13 species) had extensive velvet, including the buffy fish-owl (Ketupa ketupu), contrary to literature claims that fish-owls had lost the velvet. Collectively, there is support for both the self-masking and stealth hypotheses for the evolution of dorsal velvet in birds.
Tilapia viscera hydrolysate extract alleviates oxidative stress and renal damage in deoxycorticosterone acetate-salt-induced hypertension rats

Background and Aim: Hypertension is closely related to oxidative stress conditions, which increases malondialdehyde (MDA) expression and renal damage. Tilapia viscera hydrolysate extract (TVHE) contains compounds and peptides that act as antioxidants. This study aimed to investigate TVHE therapy effect on MDA levels and renal histological conditions in deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)-salt-induced hypertension rats. Materials and Methods: Tilapia viscera were defatted and hydrolyzed using Alcalase enzyme to obtain TVHE. TVHE antioxidant activity was measured using the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl method. Fifteen Wistar male rats were divided into five groups: Normal control (without induced DOCA-salt), DOCA-salt, DOCA-salt+Captopril 5 mg/kg body weight (BW), DOCA-salt+TVHE 150 mg/kg BW, and DOCA-salt+TVHE 300 mg/kg BW. MDA level and renal histology were observed in each group. Results: TVHE half maximal inhibitory concentration values ranged from 3.87±0.35 μg/mL to 42.03±3.55 μg/mL, which were identified as in the very strong Blois category. TVHE and captopril therapy reduced MDA expression significantly (p<0.05) compared to DOCA-salt only. TVHE and captopril therapy also improved glomerular damage in DOCA-salt-induced hypertension rats. Conclusion: TVHE has antioxidant ability, decreased MDA level, and decreased glomerular damage in DOCA-salt-induced hypertension rats.
Anaphoric demonstratives occur with fewer and different pointing gestures than deictic demonstratives

Speakers often produce demonstratives, such as this/that and here/there, together with pointing gestures. However, little is known about what leads speakers to produce some demonstrative tokens with points, and others without them. We examine 724 demonstrative references made by speakers of Ticuna, an Indigenous Amazonian language, in a corpus of landscape description interviews. Our analysis assessed the effects of demonstrative phoricity (deictic vs. anaphoric) and information status (mentioned vs. new) on the co-organization of demonstratives and pointing. We found that both demonstrative phoricity and information status affected Ticuna speakers’ gesture rate: references with deictic demonstratives and discourse-new references were more likely to co-occur with points. Both phoricity and information status also affected articulatory properties of the gestures, such as handshape and elbow extension. Together, these findings show that both language-specific factors, such as demonstrative phoricity, and universal ones, such as information status, influence the coorganization of demonstratives and pointing. (150 words)
Macroeconomic Changes with Declining Trend Inflation: Complementarity with the Superstar Firm Hypothesis

Recent studies indicate that, since 1980, the average markup and the profit share of income have increased, while the labor share and the investment share of spending have decreased. We examine the role of monetary policy in these changes as inflation has concurrently trended down. In a simple staggered price model with a non-CES aggregator of differentiated goods, a decline in trend inflation as measured since 1980 can account for a substantial portion of the changes. Moreover, introducing a rise in the productivity of “superstar firms” in the model can better explain not only the macroeconomic changes but also the micro evidence on the distribution of firms’ markups, including the flat median markup.
Lobar pneumonia and bacterial pathogens in Vietnamese children.

Background: Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in children because of its serious clinical manifestations, rapid progress, and a dangerous condition. lobar pneumonia is more severe, more difficult to determine the etiologies if only based on clinical predictors. Objectives: To describe the clinical and chest X-ray characteristics of lobar pneumonia; and to determine bacterial pathogens and treatment outcomes in Vietnamese children. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 67 patients with lobar pneumonia admitted to Children’s Hospital 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was conducted. All of nasotracheal aspiration (NTA) specimens of patients were collected and cultured. Real-time PCR was performed to identify bacterial pathogens in NTA specimens. Results: Lobar pneumonia occurred mainly in children from 3 to 7 years old (46.3%). Clinical manifestations were cough (100%), fever (95.5%), tachypnea (98.5%), lower chest-wall indrawing (53.7%), wheezing (44.8%). Of chest X-ray images, right upper lobe pneumonia was the highest (38.8%), left lower lobe pneumonia (16.4%). The most common bacteria were Mycoplasma pneumoniae (69.7%) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (53%). The original antibiotics mostly used were the 3rd generation cephalosporins (C3G) (50.7%) and C3G + azithromycin (47.8%). 58.2% of cases responded well to the original antibiotics. The successful rate of C3G + azithromycin was 81.2%. The responding of second antibiotics was also high (92.9%), mainly based on the results of real-time PCR. 100% of patients were cured. There were 2 cases with tuberculosis that moved to a tuberculosis hospital for treatment. Conclusions: Lobar pneumonia can be diagnosed by clinical examination and chest X-ray. Real-time PCR efficient supported in causative pathogens quickly and accurately, guided effective antibiotic therapy, especially in cases of poor clinical responses. Additionally, Mycoplasma pneumoniae was found in a younger group of age than the usual group. ”
CREDIT CARDS, THE DEMAND FOR MONEY, AND MONETARY AGGREGATION

We use nonparametric and parametric demand analysis to empirically estimate a credit card-augmented monetary asset demand system, based on the Minflex Laurent flexible functional form, and a sample period that includes the 2007–2009 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. We also use multivariate copulae in an attempt to capture various patterns of dependence structures. In doing so, we relax the joint normality assumption of the errors of the demand system and estimate the model without having to delete one equation as is usually the practice. We show that the Minflex Laurent copula-based demand system produces a higher income elasticity for credit card transaction services and higher Morishima elasticities between credit card transaction services and monetary assets compared to the traditional estimation of the Minflex Laurent demand system. We also show that credit cards are substitutes for monetary assets and that there is lower tail dependence between the demand for credit card transaction services and transaction balances.
The Effects of Beaver Dams on Nutrient Cycling in Cart Creek, a Tributary of the Plum Island Estuary

North American beavers are ecosystem engineers that create wetland ecosystems. In doing so, they increase the capacity of the natural ecosystem to remove excess nitrogen from the water. Possible mechanisms for this process include nitrification and denitrification performed by microbes that inhabit sediment in beaver ponds and denitrification catalyzed by electron donation to nitrate by carbon in the wood of the dam, similar to the mechanism used in a permeable reactive barrier. The presence of these mechanisms was examined in beaver dams in Cart Creek, a tributary in the Plum Island Estuary watershed in Essex, MA. The ability of the dams to catalyze denitrification was measured by analyzing nutrient concentration upstream and downstream of each of the dams. The ability of the sediments to nitrify and denitrify was analyzed by performing nutrient flux experiments on sediment cores. The denitrification catalyzed by the beaver dam itself was found to be insignificant, but the capacity for sediments of the beaver pond to perform nitrification and denitrification was found to be quite large. While the sediments from the beaver pond did not perform better than those from other areas of the creek, the formation of the beaver pond itself increases the surface area of the sediment in the creek, which increases the capacity of the creek to remove excess nutrients from the water. Thus, the presence of beaver dams in a stream enhances the capacity of that stream to remove excess nutrients from the water.
Effects of the Child Protection System on Parents

One-third of American children’s homes are investigated by child welfare agencies for abuse and neglect, yet the impacts of these investigations on parents are not well studied. I establish that months in which a child welfare investigation begins are pivotal moments in parents’ lives. I then identify causal effects of child welfare using a novel research design which combines an event study set-up with imperfect random assignments of investigators. Opening a child welfare case considerably increases mothers’ enrollment in mental health and substance abuse services, suggesting that child welfare encourages parents to seek help they may need. The effects of opening a child welfare case persist even when no child is removed from the home, and the increase in use of substance abuse services persists for up to six years. In contrast, fathers are much less responsive to child welfare involvement both in the short and long run.
Extracting Hot Photo-spots from Geotagged Photographs with Timestamps

: Discovering good photo-spots in the real world is an important problem from the point of view of sightseeing industry. While a popular photo-spot in general means a spatially localized region, it should have its own hot-period , a period of time during which it can provide more interesting photographs than other photo-spots. In this paper, we address the problem of extracting a pair of a major photo-spot and its hot-period, which is called a hot photo-spot , from a large number of geotagged photographs with timestamps that many people have taken. We propose a mathematical model for hot photo-spots, and present a method of eﬃciently identifying them. Using synthetic and real Flickr data, we experimentally demonstrate the eﬀectiveness of the proposed method.
EVIDENCES ON PRICE DISCOVERY IN BRICS

The present study tries to assess the price discovery process in BRICS economies. The price discovery is tested by assessing the long run and short run causality between the future and spot market indices of BRICS economies. The study employs daily closing prices of spot and future indices of BRICS economies. After testing the stationarity and order of integration of spot and future market series, the study employs Johansen co-integration test to assess the long run co-integrating relationship between the two markets. The long run causality is tested using error correction mechanism and Wald test is used to assess the short run causality. The results of the study suggest that the price discovery process is taking place in case of Russia and China in long run. The short run causality exists between future and spot market in case of Brazil and Russia.
Online Multi-Armed Bandit 6.854 Final Project

We introduce a novel variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, in which bandits are streamed one at a time to the player, and at each point, the player can either choose to pull the current bandit or move on to the next bandit. Once a player has moved on from a bandit, they may never visit it again, which is a crucial diﬀerence between our problem and classic multi-armed bandit problems. In this online context, we suggest several strategies and investigate their expected performance relative to optimal performance.
Innovative Teaching Techniques for Entrepreneurship Education in the Era of Digitalisation

Nowadays, in the digital age, automated software with machine learning and artificial intelligence is widely used in both business and everyday life, therefore it has to be used in education and achieving of its sustainability. The young generation makes extensive use of a wide range of software, so teaching with an auto-mated tool would be very attractive for students, but there is a need to increase teachers' digital skills and com-petencies. When studying entrepreneurship, students prefer innovative, practical teaching methods, involving automatic tools for validation of business idea feasibility.The aim of the study is to identify multidisciplinary and innovative educational approaches and techniques in entrepreneurship, containing training that uses automated software to test and improve the viability of students' business ideas.The authors followed the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan. Digitalization creates and will create more and more possibilities in future to use automatic digital tools in edu-cation and solutions in form of artificial intelligence that might be scalable and widely applied for the distance learning as evidenced by the crisis caused by COVID-19.The research is based on existing researches and comparative analysis of teaching entrepreneurship, statistical data analysis and survey conducted by authors. Discussion on and identification of innovative learning and teach-ing techniques in entrepreneurship education is also included.
The Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment

Despite significant progress in the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program, a number of major hurdles remain before the primary objective, prediction of the variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on time scales of months to years, can be achieved. Foremost among these hurdles is understanding the physics that maintains and perturbs the western Pacific warm pool, the region of the warmest sea surface temperature in the open oceans, which coexists with the largest annual precipitation and latent heat release in the atmosphere. Even though it is believed that the warm pool is a "center of action" for the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena in the ocean and the atmosphere, successful simulation of the warm pool has remained an elusive
Relationship between Religious Cultures and Student Retention in Chartered Christian Universities in Kenya

The role of this study was to explain the relationship between religious cultures and student retention in Chartered Christian Universities in Kenya. The study was based on Students’ Integration Theory by Tinto [1] and Cultural Model of Educational Management by Bush [2]. Descriptive survey research design was adopted. The targeted population was 604 year four students, 12 Academic Deans, 5 chaplains, 5 Finance Managers, and 5 Deans of students in Chartered Christian Universities. Census method was used to sample the respondents. Questionnaires which were piloted and tested for reliability using test-retest method and validated by experts were used together with interviews to collect data. Qualitative data was later analysed and presented. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics. SPSS version 22 was employed for data analysis. Pearson Product Moment Correlations Co-efficient and regression analysis were computed to establish relationships between the two variables. Embedded Design for mixed methods was used to integrate and present the findings. It was established that religious cultures were related to student retention (r=0.437; p=0.000) and thus, the null hypothesis was rejected, and the alternate hypotheses adopted. The study recommends that chartered Christian universities in Kenya should take advantage of their religious cultures and find policies that strengthen the existing cultures as tahey develop new ones. It also recommends that the Ministry of Education should develop policies that could facilitate student retention and review the existing policies on students’ retention in institutions of higher learning in Kenya and beyond. Moreover, further research should be carried out.
Genetic characterization and phylogenetic study of Indonesian cuscuses from Maluku and Papua Island based on 16S rRNA gene

Background and Aim: Indonesian cuscuses are now becoming scarce because of the reduction of habitat and poaching. Further, molecular characterization of Indonesian cuscuses is still very lacking. This study aimed to determine genetic markers and phylogenetic relationships of Indonesian cuscuses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences. Materials and Methods: This study used 21 cuscuses caught from two provinces and 16 islands: 13 from Maluku and eight from Papua. Cuscus samples were taken by biopsy following ethics guidelines for animals. The genome isolation was done using gSYNC DNA Mini Kit (Geneaid Biotech Ltd., Taiwan). The 16S rRNA gene was amplified by primers (16SKUSAF and 16SKUSAR), and the polymerase chain reaction product obtained was 1875 base pair (bp). The analysis of genetic characterization and the phylogenetic relationship was performed usingMEGA version X software (https://www.megasoftware.net/). Results: 16S rRNA gene sequencing attained 1598 bp for all samples. Based on the 16S rRNA nucleotide sequences, cuscuses from Papua and Maluku belong to the genus Phalanger and Spilocuscus. Phalanger spp. and Spilocuscus spp. from Papua can be distinguished from Phalanger and Spilocuscus from Maluku, except Spilocuscus from Ternate has a very close relationship with cuscus from Sentani, Papua. Conclusion: Indonesian cuscuses were derived into two clades based on 16S rRNA gene sequence, one group to genus Phalanger and another group to Spilocuscus.